Did the Historical Jesus Sing?
Listening to Mark's Passover Hymn
Have you ever noticed that Jesus sings in the Gospels? Take a look at this passing reference to singing which concludes Mark’s account of the last supper:
‘When they had sung the hymn (hymnēsantes), they went out to the Mount of Olives’ (14:26)
This is a curious detail, which is easily overlooked upon a first or second reading. To indulge the NRSV’s anachronism, what was this ‘hymn’ that Jesus and his disciples sang? And how might it help us to get back to what happened at Jesus’ last supper?
Our first clue in recovering the hymn is to recognise that singing was common during festivals like Passover. Consider one text from the Dead Sea Scrolls, which claims that ‘David, son of Jesse, was wise…’ and that amongst the thousands of songs he wrote, he wrote songs ‘for all the days of the festivals’ (11QPsalmsa [11Q5]).1
Philo of Alexandria, a first-century Jewish writer, confirms that it was custom at Passover to sing. He writes, ‘on this day every dwelling-house is invested with the outward semblance and dignity of a temple… The guests assembled… to fulfil with prayers and hymns the custom handed down by their fathers’ (On Special Laws, 2.148).
Hymn-singing therefore seems to have been common practice in first-century Passover meals, the kind which Jesus attends in the Synoptics. It raises the question: were there specific songs which Jesus might have sung on the occasion?
We find a hint in the Mishnah, a collection of Jewish laws and customs codified in the third century CE. This tells us that ‘[over] a fourth cup, he [the host] completes the Hallel and says after it the Benediction over song’ (Pesaḥim 10:7; cf. T. Pes. 10:7).
Here the term ‘Hallel' (praise), from which we get the term Hallelujah (praise the Lord) refers to Psalms 113-118. To complete the Hallel after the meal would refer to signing the second cluster of these Psalms, either Psalms 114-118 or 115-118.
To be sure, we cannot be certain that the Hallel mentioned in the Mishnah refers to a tradition in the time of Jesus. Yet it is perhaps suggestive that the term Mark employs is the expression hymnein. This is similar to the Greek loanword hymnon, used by the Mishnah to refer to the Hallel, which points in the direction of an early tradition.2
Behind the Hymnon
For any early Jewish readers of Mark familiar with the Hallel, the thought that Jesus sang these Psalms before his death could not have failed to be poignant.
In his last meal with his disciples, one can imagine Jesus chanting, ‘Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his faithful ones’ (116:15) or ‘the stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone’ (118:22). It may even be that Mark hoped that readers will pick up on some of these allusions. Notably, Jesus had already alluded to himself cryptically as the cornerstone who is rejected (12:10-11).
But what can we as historians make of this detail? Can we use it to get to the historical last supper? It seems that whoever has composed this account (Mark or his source) really knew the customs of the Jewish passover. It was not usual to sing at the end of an ordinary meal. So the singing of the ‘hymn’ points in this direction.
Scholars have often pointed out that other subtle details also fit Passover. For instance, Jesus interprets the elements of the meal about himself. This would perhaps not be so strange at Passover, where the meal was already interpreted. Maurice Casey has gone so far to argue that such details, along with Aramaic expressions (‘Aramaicisms’) which crop up here, point to an underlying Aramaic source.3
I think Mark may well be working from early source material here. At the very least, we can say that a variation of the words of Jesus pre-date Mark, as they are already present in Paul (1 Cor. 11:23-26).4 Yet even if Mark’s source reflects the social memory of the Jerusalem Church, I am somewhat less confident that we can trace the Passover scene all the way back to the historical Jesus.
My first reason for caution is the event’s highly theological character. It does seem perhaps too convenient that the Gospels are able to appropriate a wide range of theological symbolism in having Jesus’ last supper coincide directly with Passover, and that an interpretation of Jesus’ death is offered in this scene by Jesus himself. The prediction of one’s own death is a trope in biographical literature, and it would not go beyond the bounds of biography for the Church to retroject its theology onto Jesus.
One might riposte that theology does not necessarily eclipse history. That is true – but sometimes it does. A case in point is this very matter: both John and the Synoptics link Jesus’ death to Passover, but according to different timelines. Both traditions cannot be historically correct, which raises the question of whether either is.
Perhaps more importantly, there are some serious chronological issues with Jesus’ last supper as a Passover meal. It is difficult to imagine how Jesus could have been arrested, trialed by the Sanhedrin at night, and handed over to Pilate for crucifixion within just a matter of hours. Yet to think that this swift political manoeuvre was carried out on one of the holiest feasts of the year only compounds the issues.5
In the end, it may have been that Jesus died around Passover, rather than upon it.6 Thus, the Hallel Psalms may well have formed a part of Jesus’ devotion, as he would have sung them year after year during the feast. But when he went up to Jerusalem for the final time, he may not have had the opportunity to sing them. As the ancient Church would come to see reading Mark: the time had come to live them out.
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My translations here are taken from Brant Pitre Jesus and the Last Supper (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2015), 385ff.
See Strack-Billerbeck, op. cit., iv, 1928, p. 76, cited in A.J.B. Higgins, The Lord’s Supper in the New Testament (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1952), 21.
See Maurice Casey, Jesus of Nazareth: An Independent Historian’s Account of His Life and Teaching (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 429-437.
The big debate about Paul’s source is whether he received it as a revelation directly ‘from the Lord’, or whether he received it (presumably like his other traditions) from disciples. Given the content of the revelation, I am inclined to see it as the former, yet this does not demonstrate that the meal was a Passover, unless one is convinced that the interpretation of elements necessitates a Passover context – a point on which I am not convinced.
Raymond Brown suggests there are as many as twenty-seven discrepancies between the proceedings of the Jewish trial and the Mishnaic law. The jury is (quite literally) still out on whether it would have been legal to execute a man on Passover, but I assume that regardless of the legalities, it would have been practically very difficult. See Raymond E. Brown, The Death of the Messiah: From Gethsemane to the Grave, vol. 1 (London: Doubleday, 1994), 357-364.
For this view, see Helen K. Bond, “Dating the Death of Jesus: Memory and the Religious Imagination,” NTS 59 n.4 (2013): 461-475.