2007 Lunar Calender

Search for the real man in the Gospels

But since the 19th century and the triumph of German methods of historical critical analysis of the New Testament, the prevailing view has been that everything else recorded about his life was more or less problematical

Judith Redman summed up the consensus last year, saying: "Scholars who have looked at what we can know about the historical Jesus from the Gospels have generally decided that the answer is not much."

Geza Vermes says of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John: "They are filled with discrepancies."

Colin Humphreys is one of a growing and distinguished band of theologians, including Pope Benedict XVI, who beg to differ and refuse to see the Gospels as mere mythopoeia. He also holds a Cambridge chair in materials science.

His new book, The Mystery of the Last Supper: Reconstructing the Final Days of Jesus, is a remarkable work. He tackles what F.F. Bruce calls "the thorniest problem in the New Testament", the date and circumstances of the last supper. John states that the last supper, the trials and the crucifixion all took place before the Passover, while Matthew, Mark and Luke, the synoptic Gospels, say the last supper was a Passover meal.

It's clear that this has been a stumbling block for many a scholar. On the face of it the evangelists can't all be right.

Rudolf Bultmann famously remarked that Mark's account in particular was "completely impossible".

As well, as Humphreys says: "Jewish people would never be mistaken about whether a meal was a Passover meal or not."

He notes how the problem has worried theologians for centuries. "There has been no agreement, so today half of the world's churches use unleavened bread in their commemoration of the last supper, believing it to have been a Passover meal in which unleavened bread was used, whereas the other half use leavened bread because they believe the last supper was held before the Passover meal."

A parallel division in the Christian world sees Easter celebrated on different days -- according to the Julian calendar among the Eastern Orthodox and the (newer) Gregorian in the West -- and it is to the coexistence of different calendars used by the synoptic accounts on one hand and John on the other that Humphreys turns to resolve the problem.

He develops a new version of the multiple calendars hypothesis that the Pope controversially canvassed in his Maundy Thursday sermon in 2007.

Free Calendar Templates 2006

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