The Last Supper is commemorated a day late, a
Cambridge University physicist claims in his new book, according to
reports in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Belfast Telegraph.
Professor Sir Colin
Humphreys argues that the last supper Jesus Christ shared with his
disciples occurred on Wednesday, April 1, AD33, rather than on a
Thursday as traditionally celebrated in most Christian churches.
The theory would explain the apparent inconsistencies between the
Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke - which say the Last Supper was a
Passover meal - and that of John, which says Jesus was tried and
executed before the Jewish festival.
It would explain another puzzle: why the Bible has not allowed enough
time for all events
recorded between the Last Supper and the
Crucifixion.
Sir Colin's book, The Mystery of the Last Supper, published
this week, uses astronomy to re-create calendars, plus detail drawn from
texts such as the Dead Sea Scrolls to propose a timeline for Jesus's
final days.
''The claim I make is that we're misinterpreting some parts of the
Gospels because we don't understand sufficiently life in the first
century AD,'' he said.
Sir Colin argues that Jesus celebrated Passover early using the
pre-exilic calendar, dating from before the Jewish exile to Babylon, but
still used by some marginal groups in society at the time.
It would
have been understood by early Christians as operating alongside the
official Jewish calendar, he said.
He believes his findings, which are likely to cause ripples among
millions of Christians, could present a case for finally introducing a
fixed date for Easter, said the report in the Belfast Telegraph.
By ironing out all the perceived discrepancies in the timing of
events, Prof Humphreys believes a date could be ascribed to Easter in
our modern solar calendar.