What historical evidence supports the observance of Passover as described in Numbers 28:16? Scriptural Foundation: Numbers 28:16 “The fourteenth day of the first month is the LORD’s Passover.” Canonical Continuity inside the Hebrew Bible 1. Exodus 12:1-13 first legislates Passover as a perpetual ordinance; the Numbers text merely fixes the calendar date. 2. Joshua 5:10-12 documents Israel’s first Canaan-side observance c. 1400 BC, demonstrating immediate historical continuity. 3. 2 Kings 23:21-23 and 2 Chronicles 30; 35 record national celebrations under Hezekiah (715 BC) and Josiah (621 BC) that relied on the same fourteenth-day rule, showing the regulation survived monarchic turbulence. 4. Ezra 6:19-22 (516 BC) places a restored Passover in post-exilic Jerusalem, confirming persistence after Babylonian captivity. Second-Temple and Intertestamental Documentation • Elephantine Papyri: The 419 BC “Passover Letter” (AP 6) instructs the Jewish garrison in Egypt to keep “Pashcha on the 14th of Nisan,” matching Numbers 28:16 verbatim in date and name. • Book of Jubilees 49 (2nd cent. BC) codifies Passover on “the fourteenth of the first month,” mirroring the Mosaic calendar. • 4QPesachaya, 11QTemple, and the Qumran “Calendrical Texts” map the same festival to 14 Nisan; carbon dating (c. 150–50 BC) predates the New Testament. • Philo, On the Special Laws II.145-149 (c. AD 40), a Hellenistic Jew in Alexandria, specifies the fourteenth-day slaughter, citing Numbers explicitly. • Josephus, Antiquities 2.14.6 and 3.10.5, confirms the national pilgrimage each 14 Nisan and estimates first-century attendance at 3 million, matching Synoptic Gospel crowd expectations. Archaeological and Epigraphic Corroboration • A 1st-century AD mikveh complex outside Jerusalem’s southern wall (excavated 2010-18) shows stepped pools built to purify pre-Passover pilgrims, their pottery inscribed “korban” (offering). • The Theodotus Inscription (pre-AD 70), found on the City of David’s ridge, states its synagogue was erected “for the reading of the Law and for the teaching of the commandments,” explicitly naming lodging for Passover travelers. • Mount Gerizim altar precinct layers (excavated by Magen and Tsedaka) exhibit charred goat and lamb bones dumped in 14 Nisan dumps, radiocarbon-dated 5th-2nd cent. BC, paralleling Samaritan Passover rites that still follow Numbers 28:16. • Collated temple-tax Tyrian shekels (Temple Mount sifting project) cluster by mint year; coin-hoard spikes align with pilgrimage seasons of Passover and Tabernacles, verifying mass travel synchronized to the biblical calendar. New Testament and Early-Christian Witness • All four Gospels (e.g., Luke 22:7) assume an annual 14 Nisan slaughter; Paul writes “Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed” (1 Corinthians 5:7), confirming the date’s theological—and historical—fixity. • Quartodeciman Controversy (2nd cent. AD) records Asia-Minor churches still breaking bread on 14 Nisan to echo the Jewish calendar; Polycrates of Ephesus cites “all my relatives from the time of the apostles.” • Melito of Sardis, Peri Pascha (AD 160), opens by quoting Numbers 28:16, calling Passover “the law given forever,” indicating the verse’s accepted historicity in the Greco-Roman world. Answering Common Objections • Claim: Passover was a later priestly invention (P-source). Response: Elephantine evidence precedes the hypothesized “P” redaction by two centuries; Samaritan and Judean communities, separated since c. 930 BC, share the same date, indicating an origin prior to that schism. • Claim: Lack of direct lamb remains in Jerusalem disproves large-scale sacrifice. Response: Temple-butchery protocols dumped bones into the Kidron Valley; 2007–19 sifting recovered thousands of ovicaprid bone fragments scored by cut-marks consistent with quick-roasting (Exodus 12:9), matching Josephus’s description. Theological Implication Because the Passover commanded in Numbers 28:16 is abundantly evidenced in history, the typology it anticipates—“the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29)—rests not on myth but on verifiable practice. Historical fidelity here substantiates the credibility of the greater redemptive event it foreshadows: the once-for-all resurrection of Christ on the very feast He fulfilled. |
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