What did Jesus mean at the Last Supper when he said that he "desired to eat this Passover"?

Jesus’ disciples asked Him, “Where do You want us to prepare for You to eat the Passover?” So He sent two of His disciples and told them, “Go into the city, and a man carrying a pitcher of water will meet you.

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14. And when the hour was come, he sat down, and the twelve apostles with him.
15. And he said unto them, With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer:
16. For I say unto you, I will not any more eat thereof, until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God.

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When our Lord was celebrating the new Passover, He fitly said, With desire have I desired this Passover, that is, the new mystery of the New Testament which He gave to His disciples, and which many prophets and righteous men desired before Him. He then also Himself thirsting for the common salvation, delivered this mystery, to suffice for the whole world. But the Passover was ordained by Moses to be celebrated in one place, that is, in Jerusalem. Therefore it was not adapted for the whole world, and so was not desired.

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Hereby we may refute the folly of the Ebionites concerning the eating of flesh, seeing that our Lord eats the Passover of the Jews. Therefore He pointedly said, "This Passover" that no one might transfer it to mean another.

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Clement of Alexandria (third century), Hippolytus (third c.), Eutyches (fourth-fifth c.) and Eusebius (fourth c.) argued that the supper was a Passover meal eaten early, before the actual Passover was to take place. In contrast, Irenaeus (second-third c.), Origen (third c.), and John of Damascus (eighth c.) believed that Jesus and his disciples ate the actual Passover meal.xv

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1. Mark 14:1-2 says: "After two days it was the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. And the chief priests and the scribes sought how they might take him by deception and put Him to death. But they said, Not during the feast, lest their be an uproar of the people'." Mark 14:12 specifies that this was the same day when the lambs were killed. This suggests that the day when the priests conspired to arrest Jesus "was the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread" when the lambs were killed, and that they were worried about killing him that day or night on the feast, so that they therefore killed him after the feast. Plus, Jesus' arrest happened on the night of the Last Supper, Maunday Thursday, before the Crucifixion on Good Friday. So if on the day when the lambs were slain they were conspiring to arrest him, then the Seder Feast had already happened when Jesus was crucified a day later.
   * A counterargument goes that most Jews did not have their lambs killed in the Temple, but rather killed them at the beginning of 14 Nisan (ie. the night part of the night-day). But even if in Mark 14 the day when the lambs were killed referred to the beginning of the "night-day" of 14 Nisan, this would still have to be the period before the night of the Last Supper that Mark says followed the day when the lambs were slain and when the disciples were making preparation for the upcoming evening's Last Supper. I suppose that you could theorize that Mark was using modern Roman counting for days and was referring to the period from 12 AM to 12 AM that included the 8 PM time when Jews outside the Temple slaughtered their lambs as "the day when the lambs were slain". But T. Alex Tenant writes against this possibility:

   huge problems loom with this belief that Jesus sacrificed a Passover when the 14th day was just beginning, then ate it at the Last Supper. We will see in the following reasons why this double Passover option would have been impossible under the law of Moses:
   9. This idea would involve Jesus and the disciples sacrificing an illegal Passover at a time other than that commanded by God. The Talmud is clear that a Passover slain before noon on the 14th day would not be valid, and as the first-century Jewish biblical philosopher Philo wrote, the Jews did not offer their sacrifices at night. Furthermore, according to the Talmud, anyone eating meat from an illegal sacrifice (“piggul”) would be whipped. Jesus would not have broken God’s law concerning the appointed time to slay the Passover, even if the Jewish authorities had allowed it. It is written of any man who would not offer the Passover in its “appointed time” that “that man shall bear his sin” (Numbers 9:13).

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2. Luke 22:7 precedes the narrative of the Last Supper by saying: "Then came the Day of Unleavened Bread when the Passover must be killed."
   * But Fr. Hatzidakis writes about these references to the Day of Unleavened Bread in Mark and Luke: "Archbishop Theophylact of Bulgaria solves this issue, saying that, 'The first day of Unleavened Bread’ means Thursday, the day before the feast of Unleavened Bread. For the unleavened bread was eaten on Friday.' This explanation is confirmed by the learned Archimandrite Kallinicos... to the effect that since the people began the preparations of collecting the bread and preparing the unleavened bread, it was called the first day of unleavened bread." Right, and Mark 14:12 says that they killed the Passover lamb on the first day of unleavened bread.
3. In Luke 22, Jesus tells his apostles to ask a man carrying a jug for a room for Him to celebrate the Passover. Verse 13 says that the apostles "went and found it just as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover." Matthew 26 and Mark 14 say the same thing. The plain meaning seems to mean that it was an O.T. Passover Seder meal.
   • * But some people refer to the period from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday as a Christian "Passover" week. For example, the manuscript Vaticanus Latinus 49 says: "Likewise these eight days of Passover in which Christ the son of God resurrected signify eight days after the remission of Passover in which the entire seed of Adam will be judged, as is announced in the gospel of the Hebrews..."
4. Paul writes in I Cor 5:6-8: "Get rid of the old leavening to make yourselves fresh dough, unleavened loaves, as it were; Christ our Passover has been sacrificed. Let us celebrate the feast not with the old leavening, that of corruption and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth". This seems like an oblique indication that the Eucharist wouldn't have leavened bread, like how the Passover Seder does not use it.

1. Luke 22:15-16 could be an unfulfilled wish: "Then He said to them, 'With fervent desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; for I say to you, I will no longer eat of it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.'"
2. Jerome Koddell proposes: “It was not a Passover meal as such but had Passover motifs because of the proximity of the feast; as today, a family Christmas meal may take place during the season rather than on the day itself.”
3. David Grabbe makes a similar theory, that
   

   "day" in Greek, heeméra, does not have to refer to a specific span of 24 hours, but may indicate a general period of time or a season. The Passover sacrifice was certainly made within the time or season of unleavened bread—not the specific feast but the food itself. In fact, Abib 13—the day before Passover—was the day that the Jews disposed of all leavening, and they prepared unleavened bread for the Passover meal.
   
   According to the Mishna, on Abib 13 the Jews would burn the leaven by 10:00 am, and they were not allowed to eat anything leavened after 11:00 am. The unleavened bread was baked and ready for the Passover by 3:00 pm. Abib 13 was the beginning of the time of unleavened bread, and the Passover was sacrificed during this time, even though the Feast of Unleavened Bread did not begin until Abib 15.

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4. T. Alex Tenant takes the view that the arrest, trial, and execution of Jesus would have made a disturbance if carried out in the series of days making up the Passover festival when no work, like the trial and burial, was allowed. So the priests' worry that killing Jesus during the feast meant that he must have been killed before the night of the Passover Seder that started the days of rest.
   
5. ICXN wrote about the Last Supper that they "did not observe it standing up holding their staves (Exodus 12:11), but reclining (Luke 22:14)."
   * But eating with staves could have been a practice that wasn't absolutely necessary. It's not done today, and I've heard that it was only done by Samaritans in that period, and the rabbis justified the reclining by pointing to their freedom from Egypt.
   
6. Luke 24.30's Greek text calls the Last Supper's bread "artos" (normal leavened bread), whereas "azyma" was unleavened bread. But I also heard someone question whether artos always refers to leavened bread specifically.
   
7. St. Ignatius wrote in his Letter to the Magnesians 9-10: "Lay aside, therefore, the evil, the old, the sour leaven, and be changed into the new leaven, which is Jesus Christ."
8. Fr. Hatzidakis writes that "many preparations were made for the Mystical Supper, but no mention is anywhere made of any lamb. It does not seem that they had the traditional and mandatory lamb for a Passover meal. How could they, since no lambs were allowed to be slaughtered on the day before the Passover."
   
9. Some of the oldest iconography of the Last Supper has a fish instead of a Passover lamb.
10. T. Alex Tenant writes in "50 Reasons the Last Supper Was Not the Passover":

    When Judas left the Last Supper, the other disciples assumed he was going out to buysomething needed for the Festival (John 13:29). If the Last Supper had indeed been the eating of the Passover, then the period after supper would have been in the 15th-day Sabbath rest (which starts at sundown); thus, going out to make purchases would have been illegal according to Jewish Sabbath law.
    
    The Jews asked Pilate for the legs of those crucified (but not yet dead) to be broken so they wouldn’t escape once they were let down. According to Jewish law, the bodies could not be on the cross during the soon-coming Sabbath (John 19:31). This is total and complete proof that the day of the Crucifixion was not a Sabbath, for if it had been the Sabbath the priests would not have pushed for Pilate to put the bodies up on crosses in the first place.
    Had Jesus somehow been crucified on the 15th-day Sabbath, it also would have been illegal to carryhis body to the burial site, as carrying any load was illegal on the Sabbath. But since the day following the Crucifixion was the 15th-day Sabbath, it’s understandable that the disciples were rushing to move his body off the cross and into the tomb before that high Sabbath arrived (John 19:31; Luke 23:54).

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    Luke 23:54 says about Jesus' burial: "It was the Preparation Day, and the Sabbath was just beginning."
    
11. John 18:28 says about Maunday Thursday: "Then they led Jesus from Caiaphas to the Praetorium, and it was early morning. But they themselves did not go into the Praetorium, lest they should be defiled, so that they might eat the Passover." This tends to suggest that they didn't eat the Passover Seder yet, but it could just mean that they wanted to continue eating the meals held throughout the series of Passover days.
12. John 19:14 marks the day the Lord appeared before Pilate: “It was the day of Preparation of the Passover; it was about the sixth hour”.

13. Hoshiyya said:

    Matthew, Mark, and Luke all record that Yeshua died at the ninth hour (3:00 p.m.). This is the same time Josephus records that the slaughter of the Passover lambs commenced.

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14. John 19:31 says about Good Friday: "The Jews therefore, because it was the preparation, that the bodies should not remain upon the cross on the sabbath day, (for that sabbath day was an high day,) besought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away." Note also John 19:42: "So there they laid Jesus, because of the Jews’ Preparation Day, for the tomb was nearby." If Good Friday was "the preparation", then the Seder didn't happen yet at the Last Supper. Also, saying that "that sabbath" "was an high day" implies that this Sabbath was different than other sabbaths.
    * But one could theorize that John just meant the preparation day (Friday) for the Sabbath, and that calling it a "High Sabbath" just meant that this Sabbath fell in the series of Passover festival days, not necessarily that it was the "Sabbath" of Passover when the Seder was eaten.
15. Wikipedia's article on the Quartodeciman controversy:

    The Quartodeciman controversy arose because Christians in the churches of Jerusalem and Asia Minor observed The Lord's Supper on the 14th of the
    first month (Nisan (postexilic), Aviv/Abib (preexilic)) no matter the day of the week on which it occurred, while the churches in and around Rome changed to the practice of celebrating Easter always on the Sunday following Nisan 14, calling it "the day of the resurrection of our Saviour".

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    Since the Christians of Jerusalem and Asia Minor were celebrating the "Lord's Supper" on the 14th of Nisan when the Passover sacrifice was performed, and since the Orthodox celebrations of Holy Week are observed a day in advance of what they commemorate, then were the Quartodecimians referring to the idea that the Lord's Supper in the sense of the Last Supper was performed on the 14th/15th of Nisan? Or did the Quartodecimans suppose that Christ was crucified when the lambs were killed the day before Passover, and so they were observing the "Lord's Supper" the same night as Passover? I would suppose the latter, because it would make more sense if the Romans and Polycarp were just arguing over the calendar date for observing the same Christian feast. Besides, Polycarp as a student of John would be inclined to follow the chronology in John's gospel. T. Alex Tenant supports the idea that the Quartodecimians were celebrating 14 Nisan as the date of Christ's saving work on the Cross:

    these Asiatic believers fasted on this day until the ninth hour (the time Jesus was on the cross); then at the ninth hour—the time of Christ’s death—they rejoiced in the fact that Christ’s finished work had provided redemption...

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    It would not make much sense either for them to be celebrating the Last Supper as a Passover Seder on 14 Nisan when the Seder was supposed to be observed on 15 Nisan.

1. Note:
   
   Theophylact's reasoning is that the night-day of 14 Nisan when the lambs were killed was sometimes called the "Feast of Unleavened Bread", even though based on the Torah alone, the "Feast of Unleavened Bread" would begin the night of the Passover Seder on 15 Nisan. This is supported by Mark 14:12: "Now on the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they killed the Passover lamb, His disciples said to Him, 'Where do You want us to go and prepare, that You may eat the Passover?'"
   
   One problem with this argument though is that Mark presents this day when they killed the Passover lambs as happening in the daytime before the Last Supper. So later in verses 17-18, Mark writes: "In the evening He came with the twelve. Now as they sat and ate, Jesus said..."

1. Deacon Lance, an RC on OC.net, theorized that the Last Supper observed the "Passover of the Essenes, who disagreed with the Pharisees and the Priests about the calculation of Passover, and if I remember correctly the Essenes actually had the more accurate calculation. It is entirely possible Christ was keeping this Passover and used unleavened bread as would have been customary."
2. In the Synoptics, Christ has his apostles get his room from a man carrying a jug, which would suggest that the man was an Essene since carrying jugs for most Jews was women's work. Also, I think that the Cenacle or Upper Room is located on Mount Zion in what was the Essene Quarter.
   
3. In Mark 14, wouldn't killing Jesus a day or two after the Passover Seder feast still count as a disruption of the Passover feast week that could trigger people's resentment, as the priests worried when they said, "Not during the feast, lest their be an uproar of the people"? In that case, could the priests' conspiring during the "Passover" have some other meaning (eg. the Essene Passover) in keeping with crucifying Christ before the feast?
4. F.F. Bruce writes: “It may be that Jesus and his disciples celebrated the Passover according to another calendar than the official one; it may be that Jesus, knowing that he would be no longer alive on Friday evening, the official time for celebrating it, deliberately arranged to eat it with his disciples earlier in the week.”
5. The website Catholic.com theorizes that the Synoptics refer to the Pharisees' calculating the Passover, whereas John's gospel referred to the Sadduccees' way:

   According to The Navarre Study Bible, in Mark’s Gospel the Pharisees and Sadducees had a different way of celebrating feast days (51-52). The Pharisees were strict in their observance. If the fifteenth of Nisan fell on Friday, then that would be the day they celebrated the Passover. The Sadducees, on the other hand, were more liberal and had no problem with moving a feast day in certain situations. This practice is analogous to our modern practice of moving some feast days to Sunday when they actually occur during the week (as is commonly practiced with the feast of the Epiphany). It could also be likened to the bishops declaring a holy day not obligatory because of the day upon which it happens to fall. For example, if a holy day falls on a Friday, the bishops will sometimes dispense Catholics from the obligation of attending Mass on that particular holy day for that year.
   
   What does all of this mean? When Jesus actually celebrated the Passover, he did it in the traditional way of the Pharisees. That is what we see in the synoptic Gospels. With the Pharisees, Jesus kept the Passover strictly in accord with what Moses said in Ex. 12. However, when John wrote about Christ’s passion, he does not put the emphasis on the Lord’s Supper that the synoptic Gospel writers do. In fact, he does not mention the Lord’s Supper at all. He emphasizes the crucifixion. Only in passing, as he describes the activity of the day, does John mention that it was "the day of preparation." John was not speaking of the practice of Jesus and the apostles; he was speaking of the practice of the Sadducees, who had a large number of priests in their camp and great influence in the culture at the time. This fact explains why John calls Friday the "day of preparation" instead of Thursday. The Sadducees, who moved the Passover to Saturday, celebrated the day of preparation on Friday, rather than on Thursday as Jesus and the apostles did.

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   * But T. Alex Tennant writes against this possibility, saying: "This idea may sound intriguing to some, but it quickly breaks down since these two supposed calendars (offset by one day) would have led to tremendous confusion around Jerusalem and the Temple... The idea of two 14th-day Passovers (and two 15th-day Sabbaths) in a row was never mentioned in the New Testament, the Talmud, or in the writings of Josephus, Philo, or any other early historian."

1. Dr. Seraphim Steger suggests that it was a Chaburah fellowship meal, quotes the Talmud, and comments: "Here, in reference to a dinner with dipping of an olive of corn food (not of the bitter herbs of the Seder), one sees that one can dip on days other than Passover." This relates to Jesus using a dip at the Last Supper. There is also a theory that it was a "Berakoth" (Blessing) meal.
2. Fr. Hatzidakis doubts that it was a Chaburah meal because of the references to Christ's broken body, blood, and the covenantal language that brings to mind the Passover meal.

Mark 14
12. Now on (on in Greek is τῇ) the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they killed the Passover lamb, His disciples said to Him, “Where do You want us to go and prepare, that You may eat the Passover?”

Luke 22
7. Then came the Day of Unleavened Bread, when the Passover must be killed.
8. And He sent Peter and John, saying, “Go and prepare the Passover for us, that we may eat.”

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15. And he said unto them, With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer:
16. For I say unto you, I will not any more eat thereof, until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God.

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The word for 'desire' comes three other times in Luke and once in Acts...The combination of noun and verb, 'With desire have I desired', has parallels in our author, A. iv.17 v.l. 'let us threaten them with a threat', xxiii.14 'we have dedicated ourselves with a dedication', with which we may compare what is probably the original text at vii.17, 'the promise which he promised', and L.xxii.29 v.l. 'and I covenant with you a covenant.'

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Yeshua HaDerekh said:

It was a Pesakh Seudah haMafsekhet (literally "a last meal" or "last supper" before the fast).

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Seudah HaMafseket is the "separating meal" eaten before the fasts of Yom Kippur and Tisha B'Av.
Seudat mitzvah - Wikipedia

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