Another good reason why science can be a fellow-disciple of Scripture. The following article was first published today by Karen Peake on www.christiantoday.com
Christians around the world commemorate Jesus’ Last Supper with the disciples on Maundy Thursday.
Professor Humphreys says he used the Gospels and science “hand in hand” to answer the question of when Jesus had his final meal with his disciples and solve an apparent contradiction in the accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
While the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke assert that the Last Supper took place at the start of the Passover, John is alone in recording that it took place before the Passover.
Professor Humphreys’ study is based on earlier research he carried out with Oxford astrophysicist Graeme Waddington, in which they identified the date of Jesus’ crucifixion as the morning of Friday 3 April 33.
If Jesus died on April 3, the standard Jewish calendar of AD33 would have placed his crucifixion on the 14th day of the Jewish month of Nisan. The Passover meal, however, falls on the 15th day, which supports John’s account, but not those of the other Gospels.
The official Jewish calendar used at the time of Jesus’ death is still in place today and follows a lunar system in which days run from sunset to sunset.
The professor argues that Jesus used a different calendar to that commonly used by Jews at the time, according to which the Passover always fell earlier and the days were marked from sunrise to sunrise.
He concludes that, according to this calendar, the Last Supper would have taken place on the Wednesday of Holy Week, rather than the Thursday.
This, he contends, would solve the question of how Jesus’ arrest, interrogation and trial before two courts could all take place before his execution on Friday morning.
“Whatever you think about the Bible, the fact is that Jewish people would never mistake the Passover meal for another meal, so for the Gospels to contradict themselves in this regard is really hard to understand,” Professor Humphreys said.
“Many biblical scholars say that, for this reason, you can’t trust the Gospels at all. But if we use science and the Gospels hand in hand, we can actually prove that there was no contradiction.”
Here ends the article. It’s a good endnote to it and I hope to see more of that in the future. Science must be faithful to its mission, that is the pursuit of truthful knowledge within the bounds of the questions she can actually address. As you can’t do gardening with a bazooka, so science was called to answer the beautiful questions of the clockwork around us and not to venture in the wilderness.
Sir Colin Humphreys is a leading British physicist, professor at the University of Cambridge and author of many research papers and popular books where one of his interests is to ally science and the Bible to answer questions that people easily bypass. His recent book can be ordered here