The next paragraph concerns the Passover preparations (22:7–13). All the Synoptic Gospels agree that Jesus ate a Passover meal with his disciples. The lambs would have been slain in the afternoon on the fourteenth day of Nisan, and the meal would be celebrated that evening (22:7). The evening would start a new day according to the Jewish reckoning. John seems to date the meal before the Passover (John 13:1; 18:28; 19:14), which would place Jesus’s death on the fourteenth of Nisan, the day the lambs were sacrificed. The problem of the difference between John and the Synoptics is complex and cannot be treated adequately here. Some have argued that the Synoptic writers used the sectarian calendar from the Essenes, which would explain the variance in dating. It has also been suggested that th…