Unitarianism Defended: A Series of Lectures by Three Protestant Dissenting Ministers of LiverpoolMartineau, James
Religion
Unitarianism Defended: A Series of Lectures by Three Protestant Dissenting Ministers of Liverpool
Martineau, James
Unitarianism
(d.) The Passover being fixed to the fifteenth of the _month_, and
_that_ a lunar month, necessarily moved over all the days of the week;
and might fall, of course, into coincidence with the weekly Sabbath.
(e.) The feast of unleavened bread was a festival of seven days’
duration, the first day of which coincided with that on which the
Passover was eaten, following of course that on which it was killed.
These things being premised, we are prepared to notice the points on
which the Evangelists agree, and those in which they disagree, in their
accounts of the crucifixion, and its connected events. They all agree in
assigning the same distinguishing incidents of our Lord’s personal
history to the _four great days of the week_ most interesting to
Christians, viz., to the Thursday the last supper; to the Friday, the
crucifixion; to the Saturday, the sleep in the sepulchre; to the Sunday,
the resurrection. But about the position of the Jewish Passover upon
these days, they singularly differ; St. John fixing it on the Friday
evening, and making it therefore coincide with the weekly Sabbath; the
other three fixing it on the Thursday evening, and so following it up by
the Sabbath. The variance is the more interesting from its influence on
our views of the last supper; which, according to the three first
Evangelists _was the Passover_, according to the fourth, was _not the
Passover_. The institution of the Communion, as a Christian
transformation of the Jewish Festival rests entirely on the former of
these narratives; St. John is altogether silent respecting it. Yet it
was he who leaned on Jesus’ bosom, and stood beneath his cross.
Now what is the just inference from such discrepancies? Is it that the
writers were incompetent reporters of the main facts? Not so; for there
are few biographers, however well-informed, whose testimony, produced in
circumstances at all parallel, would not yield, on the application of as
severe a test, inconsistencies more considerable. Is it that they are
not veracious? Not so; for not a trace of self-interest is discernible
in these cases. Is it that they were not inspired? Not so; for the
transition they underwent from peasants to apostles, from dragging the
lake to regenerating the world, is the sublimest case of inspiration
(except one) with which God has refreshed the nations. But it is this;
that they were not intellectually infallible.
I have now endeavoured to give some idea of two different ways of
regarding the Christian records.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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