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JB_Brother_4446
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This is why I don’t really trust the NAB.
J
JB_Brother_4446
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Tomdstone
Guest
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JB_Brother_4446
Guest
And in Roman time, that was the modern equivalent of 6 AM.
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PNEUMA
Guest
In the Roman empire, just as today, the sixth hour in a day, is six o’clock, because each new day begins at midnight.
Even today women of the third world have to go fetch water in the morning.
“Jesus being wearied from the journey sat thus at the well, hour was about sixth”
biblehub.com/interlinear/john/4-6.htm
(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)
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PNEUMA
Guest
The source is the Spirit that came after Jesus. The Spirit reminded John of all that Jesus had said to him.
John 14:26 “But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you”
The disciples didn’t really understand what Jesus said before they got the Spirit. They thought he was going to be king in Jerusalem Palestine and that they would rule with him there.
Acts 1:6 “So when they had come together, they asked him, ‘Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”
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Tomdstone
Guest
Mark 15:25 says
25 And it was the third hour when they crucified him.
If the sixth hour is 6AM, then the third hour would be 3AM, which seems a bit early.
Are there any other places in the Bible where Roman time is used?
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PNEUMA
Guest
The gospel of John was written to the world not to the Jews, that’s why John uses standard Roman time in his text, and not local Jewish time (unknown to people of the Roman empire)
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PNEUMA
Guest
Mark is well behind John on all levels and uses local Jewish time.
Mark says nobody understood Jesus, not the Jews, not the disciples, not even Mark himself.
As planned the thing went global and John changed to the world clock
The sixth hour in John is six o’clock 06:00
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patrick457
Guest
I’ve heard this explanation, and it’s an attractive one admittedly, but I personally don’t buy it. The conservative scholar Leon Morris once objected to the explanation because he sees no evidence that this midnight-to-midnight reckoning was used “other in legal matters like leases.” (cf. Pliny, Natural History, 2.79.188) In fact, Pliny expressly says in the preceding sentence that "“the common people everywhere” count the hours of a day “from light (i.e. daybreak) to darkness.”
The days have been computed by different people in different ways. The Babylonians reckoned from one sunrise to the next; the Athenians from one sunset to the next; the Umbrians from noon to noon; the multitude, universally, from light to darkness; the Roman priests and those who presided over the civil day, also the Egyptians and Hipparchus, from midnight to midnight.
Some other people have suggested that there might have been a copyist error involved: the Greek numeral for ‘3’ (the letter Γ gamma) was confused with the numeral for ‘6’ (a digamma or Ϝ). But there’s no solid evidence for this in the manuscripts of John at all.
Now personally, I kind of see a sort of ‘synoptic bias’ in this issue. It seems to me, the assumption is apparently that Mark’s “third hour = 9 AM” time is the historical one, which might be the reason why people move John earlier in the day to make ample time for a 9 AM crucifixion.
But IMHO, I don’t see why we have to move John’s time to fit into Mark. Who knows, why can’t it be the other way around? I mentioned earlier the ‘liturgical’ hypothesis for Mark’s passion timeline - where he organized events from the passion into three hour segments as a sort of reflection of early Christian liturgical practice. (The strength of this theory I believe is that it takes into account what many scholars seem to don’t know or forget: that the synoptic gospels originally had a liturgical context - which might explain their episodic nature - and early Christian praxis.)
Maybe “the sixth hour” does mean midday, and it is John who preserved the historical detail - it would be Mark who moved the time around because of his liturgical framework. That, or they’re both not meant to be precise time indicators (as many commentators would point out); maybe they both have had symbolic or theological reasons for naming the third and the sixth hours.
(Personally, I prefer John’s chronology over Mark’s here, because if we assume the Markan timeline - where Jesus was tried, mocked and carried the cross somewhere in between 6 to 9 AM - it all seems a bit rushed. You’ve only got two or three hours to cram that all in. It’s more likely that the trial and the mocking and the procession took the greater part of the morning up until before noon - especially if you assume that the trial before Antipas is also historical.)
Finally, I should note that traditionally, many Catholics have understood the “sixth hour” in John to mean midday, not early morning. That’s why we have the Tre Ore (three hours) devotion from 12 PM to 3 PM. (Admittedly, it’s a recent devotion, but I’d still give as an example of what at least certain Catholics thought historically.) In fact, the 11th century commentator Theophylact expressed this: “Man was created on the sixth day, and on the sixth hour he ate of the tree. At the same hour that the Lord created man, did He heal him after his fall. On the sixth day, and on the sixth hour, was Christ nailed to the Cross.”
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patrick457
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P.S. to the last post.
It seems to me after some casual browsing (somebody more knowledgeable could correct me on this) that historically, Christians - Catholics especially - have assumed John’s “sixth hour” was noon, assumed an approximately three-hour crucifixion, and tried to harmonize Mark to that.
St. Augustine for example took John’s timeline for granted, and explained Mark’s “third hour” as a reference to when the crowd asked Pilate to crucify Jesus, “so that not only those are found to have crucified Jesus, that is, the soldiers who hung him on the wooden cross at the sixth hour, but also the Jews who at the third hour cried out that he be crucified.” In other words, Augustine claims that Mark’s “third hour” is a reference to when Jesus was symbolically ‘crucified’ by the tongues of the crowd that demanded His execution, and John’s “sixth hour” is a reference to when He was really physically crucified. St. Francis of Assisi’s Office of the Passion also commemorated the crucifixion of Jesus at sext (the sixth hour = noon). So did another medieval devotion, the Hours of the Cross.
It is only recently apparently that the reverse (Mark is the assumed historical detail, John is harmonized to Mark’s version) began to be true. I have a hunch this might be related to the issue of the reappraisal of Mark in early modern scholarship and the denigration of John as a valid historical source, but I don’t know.
It seems to me after some casual browsing (somebody more knowledgeable could correct me on this) that historically, Christians - Catholics especially - have assumed John’s “sixth hour” was noon, assumed an approximately three-hour crucifixion, and tried to harmonize Mark to that.
St. Augustine for example took John’s timeline for granted, and explained Mark’s “third hour” as a reference to when the crowd asked Pilate to crucify Jesus, “so that not only those are found to have crucified Jesus, that is, the soldiers who hung him on the wooden cross at the sixth hour, but also the Jews who at the third hour cried out that he be crucified.” In other words, Augustine claims that Mark’s “third hour” is a reference to when Jesus was symbolically ‘crucified’ by the tongues of the crowd that demanded His execution, and John’s “sixth hour” is a reference to when He was really physically crucified. St. Francis of Assisi’s Office of the Passion also commemorated the crucifixion of Jesus at sext (the sixth hour = noon). So did another medieval devotion, the Hours of the Cross.
It is only recently apparently that the reverse (Mark is the assumed historical detail, John is harmonized to Mark’s version) began to be true. I have a hunch this might be related to the issue of the reappraisal of Mark in early modern scholarship and the denigration of John as a valid historical source, but I don’t know.
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PNEUMA
Guest
To me, arrested at night, judged early morning, executed before midday, sounds accurate.
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guanophore
Guest
This is very fascinating. It seems to me that Natural History must have been written before 79 AD, which is where Pliny’s death is reckoned. It is possible that, within the 20 years or so before the Gospel of John was written, the whole empire would lean toward the priests and presiders over the day (Roman). We know this eventually did happen, as that is the calendar we have to day.
Mark was written relatively early in comparison, and John’s gospel has much more time to become embedded in the Liturgy.
Yes, I also have the sense that it was a long and grueling day.
This framework also accounts for the two crminials who outlasted Him on the crosses, and the desire of the Jews to have the bodies taken down before sundown.
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patrick457
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Guess what? Our ‘traditional’ midnight-to-midnight 2 x 12-hour time reckoning (the so-called ‘French hours’ or ‘French time’, aka ‘small clock’) actually only started to become the standard during the mid-17th century, only becoming universal around the 19th century, I believe.
As late as the end of the Middle Ages, there was still no set time reckoning, still no agreement as to when the day exactly began. Things were different from region to region: the French and the Germans began the day during midnight, while many northern Italians, Welsh, and Bohemians began it at sunset (the so-called ‘Italian’ or ‘Bohemian’ hours: twenty-four hours beginning at sunset or ab occasu solis). Then there’s the ‘Babylonian’ or ‘Greek’ hours: twenty-four hours beginning at sunrise (ab ortu solis). Then there’s stuff like Nuremberg hours (a combination of the Italian and the Babylonian system) or Sienese time (the day begins half an hour before sunset). Just to give some indicator of how confusing the situation was, the day begins at noon in Venice, at 1 PM in Basel, and at dusk in Bohemia. Something along those lines.
Certain professions also chose to reckon the beginning of the day differently, apparently: astronomers for centuries reckoned a day to begin at noon, because it was the easiest solar event to measure accurately. The monastic day pretty much began at dawn (with Matins and Lauds) and ended during early evening.
The fact that there was still no agreement on matters of time during the Middle Ages kind of speaks to me against the idea that the Roman midnight-to-midnight reckoning somehow became common at so early a date. In fact, the opposite seems to me the case, if we take into account Roman and medieval sundials and related stuff.
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patrick457
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During the time of Jesus, the injunction in Deuteronomy against leaving the dead bodies of hanged criminals overnight was being adapted in the context of crucifixion. While for most parts of the Roman Empire it was the norm to just leave the corpses of crucified victims hanging on the crosses for as long as possible as a deterrent, for the Jews it was the norm to take down and bury the corpses of people who have been crucified, because the Jews believed that failure to bury a dead body in the Holy Land would pollute the land God had given them. That’s why they made sure that anyone who had died at the very least be buried somewhere.
Crucifixion victims usually lasted long - crucifixion was designed to keep the victim (barely) alive and suffering for as long as possible. Jesus died very suddenly for a crucifixion victim, because He was only hanging for a matter of hours. It wasn’t unusual for someone to last a day or two.
Apparently, the authorities didn’t want the three hanging on crosses for the duration of the Passover season - aside from the sanctity of the holiday, there’s also the fact that Passover tended to be a politically volatile time of the year: there’s always the possibility of the crowds getting out of hand. (That is why the Roman prefect is in Jerusalem, when for most other times of the year he is holed up in the provincial capital of Caesarea Maritima - no, Jerusalem isn’t the capital of Roman Judaea - he’s there to personally keep an eye on the pilgrims.) For a prominent figure such as Jesus to be left on a cross was a potential cause of unrest. That’s why they needed to kill Him - if He isn’t dead already - and take Him and the other two out of public view on the very same day.
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patrick457
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Ah, Alfred Edersheim.
Actually, there’s no need to refer to the (obligatory) ḥagigah of Nisan 15 here, since there was another (voluntary) ḥagigah for Nisan 14, which one may bring along with the paschal sacrifice. However, since there was no requirement in the Torah that the ḥagigah sacrificed on the 14th be eaten at the Seder, its slaughter does not override the Sabbath or the prohibition of making an offering or eating it in a state of defilement. (Unlike the paschal offering, which even one who is ritually unclean may eat.) Therefore the voluntary ḥagigah was not brought when Nisan 14 falls on a Sabbath or by people who are defiled. For all we know, the priests could be concerned with the paschal offering of the afternoon of 14 Nisan, not necessarily the one in 15 Nisan.
Again, I may be just biased towards John here (I know, right?
), but IMHO I think John’s scenario of Jesus being crucified before the Passover may be the historical detail. Is it not possible that Mark and the other synoptics have ‘passoverized’ the historical Last Supper, because in Christian theology and liturgy the Eucharist - the body and blood of Jesus, the sacrificed lamb of God - has become the new Passover meal. I already pointed out how Mark may have ‘liturgicalized’ (is that even a word?) the passion of Jesus by assigning events to the liturgical hours. Who knows, maybe the same thing happened here?Maybe this ‘passoverization’ was not entirely caused by the gospel writers or the early Christians; it could have been a process that started with Jesus Himself. He might indeed have patterned the Eucharist after the Seder, even if the actual Last Supper was not (historically) a Seder (although of course it was still a meal eaten during Passover season - which could have contributed to the Eucharist being passoverized).
After all, in the synoptics you have the chief priests hesitating to arrest Jesus during the Passover festival “lest there be a riot among the people” - but they go ahead and arrest Him on Passover night anyway. In addition, you might consider other factors like Jesus apparently only being with the Twelve, whereas the Passover Seder was a family gathering (then again, one might imagine that Jesus now considered the disciples His family), not to mention that the bread is referred to as artos and not as azyma (yeah, I know, this sounds like the old argument the Eastern Orthodox used against the Latin and Armenian use of unleavened bread for the Eucharist, but still) - but that being said you do have evidence from the Greek OT to support the synoptics’ use of artos.
Plus, the supposed parallels between the Last Supper and the Passover meal are actually debatable in nature: many of these are IMHO rather incidental. The fact is, we really don’t know much about the Seder as 1st century Jews would have celebrated it other than the bare essentials (there was obviously the lamb, unleavened matzo, wine, bitter herbs, a recounting of the Exodus, singing - but beyond that, not much else). The modern Jewish Seder is actually the product of later development. Many of the stuff we now associate with the Seder like the afikoman or the singing of the Mah Nishtanah or the four cups of wine actually originate later than the time of Jesus. So to draw parallels between the modern Seder and the 1st century Last Supper (something that some Christians often attempt to do) is just anachronistic.
J
JB_Brother_4446
Guest
Jesus indeed gathered with His family for the Last Supper. And still, Mark and the other synoptics relate it as the Passover.Ah, Alfred Edersheim.
Actually, there’s no need to refer to the (obligatory) ḥagigah of Nisan 15 here, since there was another (voluntary) ḥagigah for Nisan 14, which one may bring along with the paschal sacrifice. However, since there was no requirement in the Torah that the ḥagigah sacrificed on the 14th be eaten at the Seder, its slaughter does not override the Sabbath or the prohibition of making an offering or eating it in a state of defilement. (Unlike the paschal offering, which even one who is ritually unclean may eat.) Therefore the voluntary ḥagigah was not brought when Nisan 14 falls on a Sabbath or by people who are defiled. For all we know, the priests could be concerned with the paschal offering of the afternoon of 14 Nisan, not necessarily the one in 15 Nisan.
Again, I may be just biased towards John here (I know, right?
Maybe this ‘passoverization’ was not entirely caused by the gospel writers or the early Christians; it could have been a process that started with Jesus Himself. He might indeed have patterned the Eucharist after the Seder, even if the actual Last Supper was not (historically) a Seder (although of course it was still a meal eaten during Passover season - which could have contributed to the Eucharist being passoverized).
After all, in the synoptics you have the chief priests hesitating to arrest Jesus during the Passover festival “lest there be a riot among the people” - but they go ahead and arrest Him on Passover night anyway. In addition, you might consider other factors like Jesus apparently only being with the Twelve, whereas the Passover Seder was a family gathering (then again, one might imagine that Jesus now considered the disciples His family), not to mention that the bread is referred to as artos and not as azyma (yeah, I know, this sounds like the old argument the Eastern Orthodox used against the Latin and Armenian use of unleavened bread for the Eucharist, but still) - but that being said you do have evidence from the Greek OT to support the synoptics’ use of artos.
Plus, the supposed parallels between the Last Supper and the Passover meal are actually debatable in nature: many of these are IMHO rather incidental. The fact is, we really don’t know much about the Seder as 1st century Jews would have celebrated it other than the bare essentials (there was obviously the lamb, unleavened matzo, wine, bitter herbs, a recounting of the Exodus, singing - but beyond that, not much else). The modern Jewish Seder is actually the product of later development. Many of the stuff we now associate with the Seder like the afikoman or the singing of the Mah Nishtanah or the four cups of wine actually originate later than the time of Jesus. So to draw parallels between the modern Seder and the 1st century Last Supper (something that some Christians often attempt to do) is just anachronistic.
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patrick457
Guest
To go back to a past post of yours: “In the synoptic gospels Jesus eats the Pasch with the Twelve.”
That’s the thing. I tend to agree with Fr. John Meier at this point: a stronger case can be made for the Johannine chronology than the synoptic. As he pointed out, the only real indicator that it was the Passover in Mark is verses 1 and 12-16. But outside those parts, there’s really not much to hint that the meal was a Seder. In fact, the words of the Jewish leaders (“Not during the feast, lest there be an uproar from the people”) could be seen as actually supporting the Johannine scenario.
The hymn singing is really the only element of the synoptic Last Supper that could convincingly link it to the Seder (the singing of the Great Hallel?) IMHO, but that also is far from certain - since we are not told what “hymn” it was they were singing. The bread, the wine, the reclining positions are far too common to be indicators that this was a real Passover meal.
J
JB_Brother_4446
Guest
Indeed the twelve were his family.
Obviously Luke’s gospel indicates this was a Passover as well.
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