I must disagree. I agree that the lambs were slaughtered on the 14th, according both to the Law and the interpretations of the Law found in the Talmud. But then this poses problems for the assertion that the day of unleavened bread must refer to the 15th, simply because this is how the term is used in the Law, because Luke 22:7, quoted by St. John, states that the day of unleavened bread is the day on which the passover must be killed. This should already give us a clue that Jews by the time of Christ had come to regard 14th Nissan and the special events attached to it as being the first day of unleavened bread…
I think I didn’t communicate what I intended clearly (and I think you are misunderstanding Chrysostom’s argument). I agree that when the Synoptics (e.g. Luke) speak of the “Day of Unleavened Bread,” they are referring to the 14th of the month. HOWEVER, Moses in the Pentateuch says that the day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread is the 15th (Leviticus 23:6). How can this possibly be reconciled? As you said, the 14th was the day of on which the leaven was cast out and the paschal lambs were sacrificed, so it came to be identified as the beginning. Chrysostom (as well as Augustine) was a biblical commentator rather than a rabbi so he valued the word of Scripture chief of all, and Scripture explicitly states that the lamb was sacrificed on the 14th while the Day of Unleavened Bread was the 15th. It would therefore seem to be a contradiction if the Evangelist identified both as the same day. THEREFORE, Chrysostom is explaining how it is not a contradiction. When he says it was the day before “that feast,” he means that it is the day before the 15th, which is the date of “the feast” given in Lev. 23:6. This is the 14th on which the lamb was sacrificed, as it says in Luke 22:7.
If you think instead that he is trying to argue that the day is the 13th, continue reading. He says,
And this one calls the day before the feast of unleavened bread, speaking of the time when they came to Him, and another says on this wise, “Then came the day of unleavened bread, when the passover must be killed;” by the word “came,” meaning this, it was near, it was at the doors, making mention plainly of
that evening. For they began with the evening, wherefore also each adds, when the passover was killed.
He is not saying that it is the day before the paschal sacrifice. He is saying it is the day before the 15th, i.e., the 14th day, the day on which the paschal lamb was sacrificed. He explicitly says that the paschal lamb was killed that evening (on which the Last Supper was celebrated).
Finally, he states in a later homily in the same series that Jesus kept the Passover on the correct day, being obedient to the law (and he says the same in our Homily 81: “But wherefore did He keep the passover? To indicate by all things unto the last day, that He is not opposed to the law.”). He says rather that the Jews were the ones who kept the Passover on the wrong day. I do not agree with this solution, but he is explicit that Jesus observed the Passover on the correct day. It is best to assume that an author’s views are coherent and not obviously contradictory if it can be avoided.
I disagree with the grammatical argument here. Had St. Augustine intended to convey that the festival simply was in force, rather than that it had begun to be in force, it seems to me that he could have simply used the perfect/preterite ‘egerunt,’ and elected not to use the verb coepio at all.
The important thing is not what Augustine could have written, but what he meant by what he did write. You could easily go through every sentence I have ever posted on this board and give me a way to much more clearly and directly communicate what I intended to. No writer, even one as eloquent as St. Augustine, will always write as clearly as someone thinks he could have. I do not believe the (Schaff?) translation of the passage is literal as he says, “it was the commencement of the days,” whereas the Latin is different. Augustine says uses the pluperfect (“more perfect”) tense, expressing that the days had commenced at some indefinite point prior to the Jews refusing to enter the Praetorium. The use of the verb “begun” does not mean that they had only just begun. Rather, being pluperfect, it means that they “already had begun.” For example, we could say that a child refused to play with his toys, because he had begun to go through adolescence. This statement would not in any way imply that the child had only just (that same year/month/day/hour/minute) entered into adolescence, that his voice had just dropped or anything of that sort. Same thing here. In John’s account of the Gospel, we know that it was already morning at the time of John 18:28, so it could not be the case that the feast had just begun, whether that day means the 14th and 15th, since days for began in the evening for the Jews or else they began at midnight. Nevertheless, in all likelihood, Augustine intended the Days of Unleavened Bread to begin on the eve of the 15th as it says in Exodus: "In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at even
, ye shall eat unleavened bread, until the one and twentieth day of the month at even." It could hardly be concluded that Augustine believed the Crucifixion occurred on the 14th from this passage.
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