But this view, too, seems to us very improbable; for the language of the Synoptic Evangelists appears to us to prove conclusively that our Lord did not anticipate the legal time for eating the Pasch, which, as we know from Exod. xii. 6, 8, and from tradition, was the night following the 14th of Nisan. Thus St. Mark, in the passage already quoted, says: “Now, on the first day of the unleavened bread, when they sacrificed (ἔθυον, the Imperf. denoting what was _customary_) the pasch, the disciples say to Him: Whither wilt thou that we go, and prepare for thee to eat the pasch?” (Mark xiv. 12). And St. Luke: “And the day of the unleavened bread came, on which it was _necessary_ (ἔδει) that the pasch should be killed” (Luke xxii. 7). These texts, we believe, prove that our Lord celebrated His last supper on the night following the 14th of Nisan, the night on which the Jews were bound by their Law to eat the Pasch. Hence we unhesitatingly reject any view which supposes Him to have anticipated the legal time for the Paschal Supper. (3) Others, as Harduin, Bisping, &c., hold that the 13th of Nisan with the Judeans was the 14th with the Galileans, who therefore kept the Pasch a day earlier than the Judeans; and that our Lord, being a Galilean, did the same. This opinion, too, would enable us to readily reconcile the Evangelists; but unfortunately the assumption as to a difference of computation between the Judeans and Galileans is a mere conjecture, and has no evidence to support it. (4) Others, as Petav., Mald., Kuin., Coleridge,(85) Cornely, &c., hold that our Lord and the Apostles eat the Paschal Supper on the night of the 14th of Nisan, while the Jews that year eat it on the night of the 15th. Maldonatus holds that it was customary with the Jews from the time of the Babylonian captivity, whenever the first day of the Pasch fell on a Friday, to transfer it to Saturday, in order that two solemn feasts might not occur on successive days. According to this view, our Lord corresponded with the requirements of the Jewish Law; the Jews, on the other hand, followed the custom which had been introduced after the Babylonian captivity. In this view, too, it is easy to reconcile St. John’s statement with those of the other Evangelists. He speaks of the night of the Last Supper, in reference to the feast as celebrated that year by the Judeans, and so places it _before_ the feast; they, on the other hand, speak of it in reference to the strict Law, and place it on the first day of Azymes, or rather on the night following the first day of Azymes.(86)