357 ON JESUS’ LAST SUPPER traditional lunar calendar, with Wednesday beginning on Tuesday evening. In fact, this explanation is secondary, for the interesting point is that the rite is performed at sunrise, facing east, which fits the solar calendar. The Feast of Booths provides another clue: according to m.Sukka 5 :6, the people should say, when the procession reaches the eastern gate of the Temple: “Our fathers, when they were at this place, ‘their backs (were) toward the Temple and their faces toward the east, to the sun’ (Ezek 8,16). And we, our eyes (are) toward God (that is “westward, toward the Temple ”) ”. The context of the quotation speaks of twenty-five wicked men standing in the inner court, but the saying puts “our fathers ” instead. They are criticized, but the worshippers — at least some of them — witness a change in rite. In fact, rabbinic tradition has inherited from both Pharisean and Essene traditions 20 and it is well known that, for their first prayer in the morning, the latter faced the rising sun (War 2 :128 and 148). It is also well-known that the Therapeutae had a similar rite every 50th day (Philo, Vita Contemplativa § 64-90). We learn from m.Rosh haShanah 2 :9 that, at the end of the 1st cent. CE, R. Gamaliel, the head of the rabbinic academy, told a sage to desecrate the Day of Atonement which he had computed, i.e. at a non-lunar date. Another story is instructive. In Batanaea on the Golan heights, Herod the Great created a peaceful settlement and installed there a group of Babylonian Jews, who had been living in Syria. He gave them lands to break in and exempted them from taxes. Their leader, Zamaris, built a town, Bathyra and several strongholds (Ant. 17 :23-26). Concerning this town, Rabbinic tradition 21 reports the following event: it happened once that Nisan 14th fell on a Sabbath, and the elders of Bathyra did not know if the preparation of the Passover sacrifice should take precedence over the Sabbath rest or not. They asked Hillel, a Babylonian, who did not know either, but he eventually remembered a teaching he had heard in Judea. Then he was proclaimed Patriarch. The query itself is odd, for according to the lunar calendar Passover falls on a Sabbath every seven years, See S. LIEBERMAN, “The Discipline in the So-Called Dead Sea Manual 20 of Discipline”, JBL 71 (1952) 199-206. j.Pes 6 :1, p. 33a. Other versions are given in t.Pasha 4 :13-14 and b.Pes 21 66a. See É. NODET – J. TAYLOR, Origins of Christianity. An Exploration (Collegeville, MN 1998) 141-152.