Jubilees and the Year of Christ’s Death

The following article follows from previous research on the canon of the Ethiopian Orthodox church, or at least one of its apocryphal books, the Jubilees. This is an attempt to answer the question, “Why is there a difference in when the Passover and Crucifixion took place in the book of John versus the other gospel books?” 

It turns out that there is a place in the Jubilees that gives a clue to the above question. If we consider the Gospel of John, Christ’s crucifixion and the feast of Passover are described to happen on the same day. This contradicts all the other Gospels showing Jesus and the disciples celebrating the Passover on the day before. This is a serious discrepancy that needs further explanation. 

To account for this difference, the Eastern Orthodox churches simply teach that the feast was not a Passover, and there are some western theologians who agree. For the West, it remains an open question, and so we continue to investigate it. 

It seems that the calendar in use by the priests in the Second Temple Period had been brought in by the Hasmoneans. In contrast, there was a group of conservatives (who scholars are now calling “Enochian Jews”). This group objected to the foreign influence and used a 364-day calendar that arranged for all the dates of all the festivals to come on the same day of the week every year. (Yes – they knew it was a day and some fraction shorter than the true solar year, so every seven years they compensated by adding a week.)  

By the time of Christ, the Enochian Jews had morphed into the Essenes and they continued to use this calendar for themselves in protest against the Hasmonean priesthood. Evidence of their influence appears, for example, in the fact that they designated themselves, “The Poor in Spirit.” These were the first to receive a blessing in Jesus’ Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3). While this is so, by comparing all of Scripture, one can readily see that Jesus was referring to more than just the Essenes; rather, he had broadened its meaning to apply to everyone. Thus, the “poor in spirit” does not apply to just the Essenes, but all who have faith in Christ by God’s grace.  

Another indication of Essene influence is the passage regarding the answer to the question, “Where shall we eat the feast?” Jesus directed the two unnamed disciples to go into the city and look for a man carrying a water jar. That task being woman’s work in that day and place, designating a man was a clue that they were looking for a celibate order of monks. This clues us in that Jesus wanted the disciples to find a particular Essene, since this group fits the description he gave.  

There are eight years (29-36 AD) in which the Crucifixion of Christ could have taken place. If Lutherans are right in saying that Christ and the disciples celebrated the Passover feast as shown in the Essene calendar, and it was one day before the Temple celebration of Passover, there was only one of those years that had them one day apart: 30 AD.  

The Essenes were very particular about their calendar, which is highlighted in this quotation from Jubilees 6:38: “Let them not move their festivals by even one day.” Their calendar was older than the Hasmonean calendar and they believed they had received it from God. The Hasmonean calendar made all the feasts “moveable”, and they were never in accord with what the Essenes called “the truth” (though in some respects Jesus seemed to agree with the Essene calendar).  

In any case, Jesus’ death on that day – the day after the Essene Passover – not only covered all of our sins, but also covered the “sin” of celebrating “one day later.”  

By Richard H. Leigh, M.A. Historical Theology (Lutheran School of Theology, Chicago) Outreach Facilitator