On the first day you shall remove leaven out of your houses (ESV).
howbeit the first day ye shall put away leaven out of your houses (JPS).
No one has any business trying to fix the Synoptic Problem (Mat. 26:17,
Mark 14:12,
Luke 22:7) until they can first show how this problem is fixed in Exodus. See also
Exodus 12:18-19. No, I am not giving you the answer. I'm asking you to acknowledge the problem first.
The Talmud actually does a good job of answering the problem of Exodus 12:15, and how this fits in with the New Testament scriptures can be found in this chapter, starting on page 379:
http://themessianicfeast.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/TMF_Template-Challenge.pdf
Here below Is a portion from that chapter:
Josephus likewise refers to this whole festival as having eight
[1] days of unleavened.
[2]
Luke also aligns, showing that the 14th day (when the Passovers were sacrificed) was considered one of the eight unleavened days:
DBY Luke 22:7And the day of unleavened bread came, in which the passover was to be killed.
[3]
Mark, too, makes it clear that the 14th day (when the Passover was sacrificed) was the first of these eight days of unleavened:
NASMark 14:12 And on
[4] the firstdayof Unleavened Bread, when the Passover
lamb was being sacrificed, His disciples said to Him, “Where do You want us to go and prepare for You to eat the Passover?”
***
In both Hebrew and Greek, the word “first” can also be translated as “previous.” The Talmud makes it clear that when God called the 14th day the “first” day (Exodus 12:15, the day to remove the leaven), He did not mean the
first of the seven-day Feast of Unleavened Bread, for if you waited until the 15th day to remove the leaven you would have already broken the law to have no leaven during the seven-day Festival. Therefore the obvious way to understand “first” here is “previous”—the day
preceding the Feast (i.e., the 14th day):
GEMARA: We see thus, that at the commencement of the sixth hour, all agree, Chometz
[5] must be burned. Whence do we adduce this? Said Abayi: From two passages, viz. [Exod. xii. 19]: “Seven days no leaven shall be found in your houses,” and [ibid. 15]: “But on the first day ye shall have put away leaven out of your houses.” According to this, then, on the first day there would still be leaven in the house and this would be contrary to the ordinance of the first passage? Hence we must say, that by “the first day” is meant the day preceding the festival. Then why say the sixth hour? Say that already early in the morning of the day preceding the festival (leaven should be burned). The word “but” with which the passage commences divides the day into two parts, so that in the morning leavened bread may be eaten while in the afternoon it must not.
[6]
They continue by explaining that Exodus 34:25 is God’s directive of why leaven had to be removed by noon of the 14th day (called the “first” day):
The disciples of R. Ishmael taught: The reason that Chometz must be removed on the 14th (of Nissan) (the eve of Passover) is because that day is referred to as the first day (of the festival) in the passage [Exod. xii. 18]: “In the first, on the fourteenth day of the month, at evening shall ye eat unleavened bread,” etc.
Rabha said: “The reason may be inferred from the passage [Exod. xxxiv. 25]: ‘Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven; neither shall be left unto the morning the sacrifice of the feast of the passover,’ which signifies, that the Passover sacrifice must not be offered up as long as there is yet leaven.” If that be the case, then it might be said that the leaven should be burned by each man immediately before offering his passover sacrifice; why designate the sixth hour? The passage means to state, that when the
time for the Passover sacrifice arrives, there must no longer be any leaven on hand.
[7]
And now a quote from early church writer and Fourteenther Clement of Alexandria (ca. AD 150 to ca. AD 215), where he describes how the disciples asked their question of Jesus on the 13th day:
From the Last Work on the Passover, quoted in the
Paschal Chronicle:
Accordingly, in the years gone by, Jesus went to eat the Passover sacrificed by the Jews, keeping the feast. But when he had preached He who was the Passover, the Lamb of God, led as a sheep to the slaughter, presently taught His disciples the mystery of the type on the thirteenth day, on which also they inquired, “Where wilt Thou that we prepare for Thee to eat the passover?” It was on this day, then, that both the consecration of the unleavened bread and the preparation for the feast took place. Whence John naturally describes the disciples as already previously prepared to have their feet washed by the Lord. And on the following day our Saviour suffered, He who was the Passover, propitiously sacrificed by the Jews.
Clement continues, and shows that Christ suffered on th 14th day:
Suitably, therefore, to the fourteenth day, on which He also suffered, in the morning, the chief priests and the scribes, who brought Him to Pilate, did not enter the Praetorium, that they might not be defiled, but might freely eat the passover in the evening. With this precise determination of the days both the whole Scriptures agree, and the Gospels harmonize. The resurrection also attests it. He certainly rose on the third day, which fell on the first day of the weeks of harvest, on which the law prescribed that the priest should offer up the sheaf.
[8]
John also makes it clear that the disciples came to Jesus on the 13th day when he shows that the day
after the disciples asked their question was the Crucifixion (the 14th day). We know this because on this Crucifixion day the Jewish guards were concerned with the purification required so they could eat the Passover:
NAS John 18:28 They led Jesus therefore from Caiaphas into the Praetorium, and it was early; and they themselves did not enter into the Praetorium in order that they might not be defiled, but might eat the Passover.
[1] Some say that Josephus is referring to the rabbinic custom of adding a second day to certain festival high Sabbath days (thus making eight days for Passover), but this is not accurate. Although scripture proclaimed
one day for the Festival Sabbaths, later history shows that (probably after Rome destroyed the Temple) the rabbis proclaimed that those in the Diaspora were to keep certain Festival holy days for
two days. This was to avoid desecrating the Sabbath, for those in outlying areas would have no way of knowing which day had been determined by the Sanhedrin as the first of the month (i.e., the new moon, which was always either 29 or 30 days after the previous new moon). Therefore they might not have known which was the 15th-day Sabbath of Passover, so an additional day was to be kept by those in distant locations. However, an extra day was never added in Jerusalem while the Temple existed, so it has no bearing on this Last Supper controversy. Rather, Josephus is counting the 14th day together with the seven-day Festival, which makes eight unleavened days.
[2] Whiston,
The New Complete Works of Josephus, “Jewish Antiquities,” 2.15.1, p. 107.
[3] Although Luke 22:7 is another scripture that seems to show that the disciples asked this question on the 14th day, it is another of the scriptures that will be correctly interpreted in the chapter “The Three Major Greek Keys That Unlock the Gospels.”
[4] The Greek word translated as “on” here is also a dative of reference and should have been translated as “with reference to” or “concerning.” See “The Three Major Greek Keys That Unlock the Gospels” chapter for more on this.
[5] “Chometz” refers to that which is fermented or leavened.
[6] Babylonian Talmud, Book 3, Tract Pesachim, ch. 1, p. 19,
http://sacred-texts.com/jud/t03/psc05.htm.
[7] Babylonian Talmud, Book 3, Tract Pesachim, ch. 1, pp. 19–20,
http://sacred-texts.com/jud/t03/psc05.htm.
[8] Roberts and Donaldson,
Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 2, p. 581.