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The Passion

At the end of the previous chapter I raised the possibility that the meal presented by Paul in 1 Corinthians was an early form of Christian Passover. This is not the first time that this has been presented, but the idea is usually dismissed, partly because there is very little positive evidence to support it, and partly because the presentation of the idea has often been too specific or too detailed. I am not, in this book, aiming to suggest that the form of an early Christian celebration at the time of the Jewish Passover can ever be known. I am not even suggesting that every Christian community in the middle of the first century must have celebrated a Passover. I am simply offering the possibility that the Lord’s Supper, as outlined in 1 Corinthians, was an annual event, most probably associated with the time of the Jewish Passover. What I hope to do in this chapter, therefore, is to investigate the various texts and ideas that would be needed to support such a minimal contention.

There is one text in particular that is central to this argument and that is the text of the Last Supper. Paul quotes from this text when discussing the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor. 11.23–25), suggesting that such a text, or at least an oral narrative that underlies the text, was available to him in the mid 50s of the first century. The various Gospel versions of the text were compiled, at the earliest, much later in the first century. So what was the source of Paul’s quotation? If it is assumed that the meal was a celebration at the time of the Passover, in some way associated with the death and resurrection of Jesus, then the quotation may have come from a larger narrative of the Passion recounted within the context of the celebration. One writer who has suggested this possibility is Etiene Trocmé in his 1965 book, The Passion as a Paschal Liturgy (1983). Trocmé’s attempt to reconstruct a primitive form of the Paschal liturgy based on much later Christian and Jewish models must be rejected. However, the first half of the book, where he argues that the Passion narrative had an earlier life, before it was combined with other texts to form the Gospels, does deserve further investigation. If this presentation is considered to be possible, or even desirable, as an explanation of the narrative then that has consequences not just for the account in 1 Corinthians, but also for an understanding of the Gospel narratives of the Last Supper.

If Paul is quoting from a larger Passion narrative, whether that existed in textual form or as an oral presentation, then that Passion narrative must have included, even at this early stage, an account of the Last Supper. This probably suggests that the story of the Last Supper developed as part of the larger narrative and may never have existed in its own right as a separate unit. Practically all the studies of the ‘institution narrative’ within liturgical writing have tended to assume the opposite, that in some way the story of the Last Supper is related to the origins of a cultic meal within the Christian community which, while clearly linked to the death and resurrection of Jesus, only comes to be attached to the longer narrative because it has already established itself as the warrant for a weekly event. In this chapter, therefore, I want to propose that the narrative of the Last Supper must be seen as an integral and essential part of the Passion narrative, which in turn is probably independent of the later and longer Gospel accounts. If this can be demonstrated as a plausible reading of the evidence then the possibility of the Passion narrative being developed as part of a very early Christian celebration at the time of the Passover becomes more acceptable. It is in this light, I would suggest, that the accounts of the Last Supper in the various Gospels, as well as in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, need to be analysed.

In this chapter, therefore, I am going to begin with Trocmé’s theory that the Passion narrative existed as a separate unit before the final editing of the Gospels. In particular it is necessary to look at the development and construction of Mark’s Gospel, as this, according to Trocmé, is the place where the Passion narrative and the other elements of the Gospel first come together. I will then go on to look at the range of evidence that is available for the understanding of the Passover within the first-century Jewish and Christian communities. Unfortunately there is very little evidence for either community at this time, and the danger of reading back into this period material that relates to later developments must always be avoided. I will end the chapter by looking at the Last Supper stories as an integral part of the wider Passion narrative and ask what this says about the way in which they should both be understood from a textual and historical point of view.

Trocmé on the Gospel of Mark

Trocmé begins his analysis of The Formation of the Gospel According to Mark by looking at the possible sources of the material contained in the Gospel (1975, pp. 8–86). Having rejected various theories of a ‘proto-Mark’, Trocmé moves on to look at the kind of material that has gone to make up the current text. He identifies a series of sayings, which could be derived from the tradition (pp. 44–5). He notes the miracle stories, which Trocmé argues could only have come from eyewitness accounts or stories circulating among the Christian communities of Galilee (pp. 51–4). The legends surrounding John the Baptist probably come from the same source (pp. 54–6). There are then a series of narratives that contain sayings-type material: the baptism, the transfiguration and the entry into Jerusalem. These sayings are presented either in the form of a word from God or as commentary on Hebrew Bible sources (pp. 56–9). All this leaves the narrative of the Passion, chapters 14–16, which most commentators recognize as being a single coherent unit of a kind very different from the short, almost disconnected, elements of the first 13 chapters (pp. 59–63).

In discussing the Passion, Trocmé refers to the work of Carrington and Schille in order to explore a possible source for the narrative (Trocmé, 1975, pp. 60–1). Carrington argues that the Passion was ‘put together as the megillah, or scroll for reading aloud in public, that was used by the primitive Church for the Christian Easter’ (Trocmé, 1975, p. 61), while Schille ‘thinks that it was the annual commemoration in Jerusalem of Good Friday and Easter that made it necessary to crystallize the memories of the passion’ (Trocmé, 1975, p. 61). Both of these authors, as Trocmé rightly comments, provide too much detail for their theories, which are based on later Jewish or Christian models, and do not really fit the religious and social situation of the first Christian communities. However, Schille does suggest that the first day of the celebration may have consisted of an annual meal accompanied by an account of the last night of Jesus before the betrayal and crucifixion.

Trocmé moves on to look in more detail at what the compiler, or editor, of the Gospel appears to be opposed to and what he appears to support. In doing this Trocmé identifies that the compiler of the first 13 chapters of Mark is less antagonistic to the Jews than other Gospel writers, that he has difficulties with other Christians, especially the tradition identified with the disciples, and he has a serious problem with the family of Jesus that Trocmé identifies with James and the leadership of the Christian community in Jerusalem (see also Weeden 1971, p. 50; Munro 1982, pp. 238–9). This, in part, leads Trocmé to the conclusion that many of the traditions that make up the first 13 chapters of the Gospel, as well as their original compiler, come from the north of Palestine and are in opposition to the community in Jerusalem (1975, pp. 136–7). The causes defended by the first section of Mark reinforce this understanding with a nascent ecclesiology rooted in the idea of Jesus as head of the Church, rather than any understanding of the disciples as leaders in any direct sense (1975, p. 214). The narrative of the Passion, however, presents a very different picture, being decidedly more favourable towards the disciples and more clearly rooted in the Jerusalem context.

Trocmé argues that the first section of Mark derives from a context in which the traditions of Galilee are brought together to form a continuous narrative by an individual who is sympathetic to the needs of the Christian community in that area, a view previously expressed by Carrington and others who tried to discover evidence for an early Christian calendar within the text of the Gospel (Carrington 1952, pp. 80–1). The Passion narrative, however, for both Trocmé and Carrington, existed as a separate document, probably originating within the community in Jerusalem. The two traditions are brought together, according to Trocmé, with a small amount of extra editing, possibly by an individual called Mark, and possibly in Rome, to form the Gospel as it exists today (1975, pp. 215–59).

Trocmé’s analysis is detailed and, in its parts, convincing. Many other commentators have come to similar conclusions (for example, Johnson 1960, pp. 220–2). However, it is not a view that has been developed extensively in more recent literature on Mark, with most recent commentaries assuming that Mark is a single coherent document that originated in or around Palestine and/or Rome in about 70–75 ce (for example, Peterson 2000). Smith goes so far as to suggest that ‘Mark’s passion narrative has been shown in recent research to be largely a creation of the gospel writer’ (2003, p. 225). Despite this, however, there are reasons to accept at least the possibility that a Passion narrative existed before the current Gospel was compiled and had been part of the tradition, at least in Jerusalem, from a very early date.

The origins of the Passion narrative

One of the few contemporary authors to raise the possibility of the Passion narrative forming a specific unit with a life prior to the compilation of Mark’s Gospel is Gerd Theissen. In The Gospels in Context (1992), he notes the fact that many scholars have recognized that the Passion forms a coherent whole, unlike the first half of Mark’s Gospel, which is made up of a series of sayings and stories that could be presented entirely separately and in any order (1992, pp. 168–9). However, Theissen asks whether the Passion narrative should begin at 14.1, which he recognizes as forming a natural break in the text. Alternatively it could begin with the arrest at 14.43, or perhaps from the account of the entry in Jerusalem at 11.1. Theissen then goes on to conduct the same kind of analysis of the Passion narrative that has already been described in relation to his work on 1 Corinthians. He begins to explore the people who are mentioned in the text and to ask why they are referred to in the way that they are (1992, pp. 170–89).

Pilate, for example, is referred to by name, but without his title. Meanwhile ‘the high priest’ is mentioned by his title, but his name is not given. Both of these would have been understandable if the text originated in Jerusalem only a few years after the events portrayed. Likewise, Simon is mentioned as the father of Alexander and Rufus, and Mary is referred to as the mother of the lesser James and Joses. In both cases it is the sons who are presumed to be known to the listener rather than the parents. This places the text within a particular generation, that of Jesus himself or the one immediately following. Third, the reference to places in people’s names – Cyrene, Magdala, Arimathia, even Nazareth – are not to places that would have been well known outside of Palestine at the time (Theissen 1992, p. 179; Best 1992, II, p. 857; Miller 2004, p. 157).

Theissen then moves on to a discussion about Barabbas. Having noted that Mark gives no explanation of who he is when he first introduces him in the narrative – he is just ‘a man called Barabbas’ (Mark 15.7) – Theissen comments that Mark talks about ‘the rebels’ and ‘the insurrection’ suggesting that this has to be understood as the most recent insurrection. As there were further riots in Jerusalem under Cuspius Fadus (44–45 ce), Theissen asks whether the story of Barabbas must predate these riots (1992, p. 183). Finally, Theissen draws attention to two anonymous figures in the garden at Gethsemane. One strikes out with a sword and cuts off the ear of a servant of the high priest. The other, following a struggle with the guards in which he loses his clothes, runs off naked. Having looked at various interpretations for the role of these anonymous figures, Theissen suggests that the simplest explanation is that because of their actions these men are in danger from the authorities and therefore probably still alive at the time of the telling of the narrative (1992, pp. 186–7).

Drawing on these and other elements of the narrative, Theissen goes on to argue that it is possible that the Passion narrative, probably from 14.43, was developed within the Jerusalem community during the reign of Agrippa I, probably between 41 and 44 ce (1992, p. 198). This was a time, Theissen argues, when the community felt under particular stress with the ever-present possibility of persecution and the death of James. According to Theissen the Passion may have been compiled to enable the community to deal with this situation. As Theissen says,