Paddy the Golden Doodle Solves
Another Mystery:
The Greatest Calendar Heist in
History: How Jesus Outsmarted Judas with a Water Jug
By Pastor Jim Allen
I walked into the study, and there
he was. Paddy, my Golden Doodle, was sprawled out on the rug, his paws
delicately holding open a copy of the Book of Enoch—specifically the
section on the Luminaries.
“What are you doing there, Paddy?”
I asked, leaning against the doorframe.
Paddy didn’t even look up. He just
adjusted his reading glasses (don’t ask me where he got them... I really need
to check my Amazon purchase history again) and let out a long, scholarly sigh. “Have
you ever wondered why there were two Passovers during Holy Week in 33 AD?”
I blinked. “No, I guess I haven’t,
Paddy. I usually have my hands full with the sheep and the Sunday bulletin. How
were there two Passovers?”
Paddy peered over his spectacles. “You
would think with your big, fancy theological education, you would know. But you
see, that’s the problem with you academics. You spend so much time answering
the professors’ questions, you never think to ask and answer your own!” Paddy
snipped.
I thought for a moment. Paddy had
a point. Sometimes in seeking the degree, we forget to learn along the way. To
take our own rabbit trails. I was beginning to realize that maybe instead of
going to seminary, I should have bought a Golden Doodle in the first place.
“Hello, in there!” Paddy barked,
snapping me out of my daze. “Did I lose you for a moment?”
“Just a moment, Paddy. Please, go
on!” I replied, taking a seat.
“And,” Paddy continued, finally
looking up with that scholarly glint in his soulful brown eyes, “have you ever
wondered why Jesus gave orders to follow a man with a pitcher of water (Mark
14:13, Luke 22:10) to find the place where they would hold Passover on a
Tuesday night? Talk about a strange ‘GPS’ coordinate, Dad.”
“No, I guess I never spent a lot
of time on that Scripture, Paddy. Help me out. After all, you are evidently the
Second Temple Judaic literature scholar in the family.”
Paddy sat up, wagging his tail
once—thump—for emphasis. “Grab a stool and listen closely, because I’m
about to tell you about the slickest tactical maneuver in biblical history. I
call it: The Greatest Calendar Heist in History: How Jesus Outsmarted Judas
with a Water Jug.”
The Ultimate Scheduling Conflict
“Now look, Jim,” Paddy said,
pacing the rug like a seasoned professor. “If you’ve ever tried to organize a
simple dinner party with twelve of your mates, you know it’s an absolute
nightmare. Now, imagine trying to organize a dinner party where the meal is the
foundation of a New Covenant, the authorities are out for your head, and one of
your twelve mates is actively trying to sell you out to the enemy.”
“Sounds like a bad day at the
sheep shearers,” I muttered, suddenly wondering why Paddy had adopted a slight
Australian-English accent.
“Worse! For centuries, scholars
have been scratching their heads over a massive plot hole. Matthew, Mark, and
Luke make it sound like Jesus and the lads are sitting down for a proper
Passover feast. But then John (John 18:28) chimes in and says that on Friday
morning, the Pharisees wouldn’t enter Pilate’s headquarters because they didn’t
want to be defiled before they ate the Passover. So, did Jesus eat it
early, or were the Pharisees just running terribly late?”
“Go on,” I replied, leaning
forward. He had my total attention now. I was realizing that the Friday Jesus
was crucified—alongside the lambs at 3:00 PM in 33 AD—was Passover. So how
could Jesus have held the Passover meal that instituted the Lord’s Supper, the
Holy Communion, the Holy Eucharist beforehand? I am not too proud to be taught
by my Doodle.
Paddy tapped his paw on the Book
of Enoch. “Jesus had a logistical paradox. He needed to be two things:
1.
The Participant: He had to eat
the Passover Meal to institute the bread and the wine... the Lord’s Supper!
2.
The Sacrifice: He also had to
be the Passover Lamb, hanging on a Roman cross on Friday afternoon, exactly
when the Temple priests were slaughtering the lambs.
“If He waits until the official
Friday Passover to eat the dinner, He’s already dead. If He eats it on Thursday
night, it’s not a legally recognized Passover, just a very tense Thursday
supper.”
Operation: Secret Essene
“So, what’s the play?” I asked.
“A covert op,” Paddy whispered,
leaning in conspiratorially. “In Mark 14, Jesus tells Peter and John to go into
Jerusalem. But He doesn’t give them an address. If He gave them an address,
Judas—that ultimate snake in the grass—would have slipped out the back door and
brought the temple guards to arrest Jesus before the appetizers even hit the
table. Instead, Jesus gives them a secret signal: ‘Go into the city, and
there you will meet a man carrying a pitcher of water. Follow him.’”
Paddy gave a little doggy grin. “Dad,
in first-century Judea, carrying water from the public wells was strictly women’s
work. A man hauling a water pitcher through the streets was about as subtle as
a donkey in a tuxedo. He would stick out a mile away! Why was he carrying it?”
“I give up, tell me!” I said,
anxiously awaiting the answer.
“Because he was an Essene,” Paddy
replied smugly.
“You mean the guys from the Dead
Sea Scrolls?”
“Exactly! They lived in male-only,
‘guys-only’ monastic communities.”
“Not exactly a woke community,
huh?” I attempted to joke.
Paddy rolled his eyes, ignoring my
dad joke entirely, and continued. “No women meant the lads had to fetch the
water themselves. By telling the disciples to look for the bloke with the jug,
Jesus was sending them straight into the believers of the Essene Quarter of
Jerusalem.”
The Tale of Two Passovers
“The Essenes hated the official
Jerusalem Temple calendar,” Paddy explained, pointing to a chart he’d
apparently drawn on a napkin with a Sharpie. “The mainstream priests used a
lunisolar calendar based on the moon. But the Essenes? They followed the
ancient Book of Enoch, which demanded a 364-day solar calendar. Because
their calendar was a perfect mathematical grid, their holidays never shifted. They
believed the beginning of each new year should begin on Wednesday just like in
Genesis 1 when God created the Sun, the Moon, and the Stars.
|
Feature |
The Temple Calendar (Mainstream) |
The Essene Calendar (Enochic) |
|
Timekeeper |
The Shifting Moon |
The Fixed Sun |
|
Passover Day in 33 AD |
Friday |
Tuesday |
|
The Vibe |
Public, official, crowded |
Secretive, monastic, rigid |
“Because the Essenes lived on a
totally different timeline, they were prepping their dining rooms on Tuesday,
completely ignoring the mainstream world that was waiting for Friday.”
Checkmate, Judas
“By utilizing the ‘man with the
water,’ Jesus tapped into this alternate, fully legal Jewish timeline. He sat
down for a legitimate, culturally recognized Passover meal on Tuesday night.
Judas was completely blindsided! He was probably expecting a Thursday betrayal,
only to realize the New Covenant had already been instituted right under his
nose.”
Paddy hopped up onto the armchair,
looking incredibly proud of himself. “Even better, a Tuesday Last Supper solves
the timeline of the crucifixion. It buys three full days for the legal circus.
It gives the authorities time to drag Jesus from Annas, to Caiaphas, to the
Sanhedrin, to Pilate, over to Herod, and back to Pilate. Trying to cram all
those trials into a few hours between Thursday midnight and Friday morning is a
logistical nightmare!”
“So, Jesus used the calendar
against them?” I asked in awe.
“Like a grandmaster,” Paddy said,
his tail wagging furiously now. “He wasn’t an Essene—He broke their purity
rules constantly by hanging out with tax collectors and healing the lepers—but
He used their solar calendar to secure the VIP room. He outsmarted the traitor,
instituted the Eucharist, and walked straight into His destiny on Friday
afternoon, perfectly on time.”
Paddy hopped down and looked back
at his book. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to ask Miss Mary to go fetch me
a pitcher of water. After all, that is women’s work.”
“I wouldn’t do that, Paddy,” I
cautioned quickly.
“Why not?”
“I would leave off the part about
it being ‘women’s work’ if you ever want another treat from the Church
Secretary!” I replied.
“Fair point,” Paddy mumbled.
“In any event, Paddy, you are
remarkable. A little naïve about office politics, perhaps, but remarkable!”
Pastor Jim Allen is the shepherd
of Trinity Evangelical Church and is a doctoral candidate in the study of
Biblical Semiotics. If you are interested in further Bible Study, come and join
us each Wednesday morning at 10:00 AM in the Trinity Church Fellowship Hall, or
on Thursdays at 11:30 AM at the American Legion, or at 1:45 PM at the Senior
Citizen Center. Pastor Jim also invites you to Sunday Worship at 10:10 AM at
Trinity Evangelical Church located at 505 Mulberry Street, Mount Vernon,
Indiana. Call for more information: (812) 838-3805.
