212 ÉTIENNE NODET and Sunday morning. As for Jesus’ last week, this is consistent with a last Passover on Tuesday evening, three days later, with un- leavened bread. But one major problem remains. In 1 Cor 11,23, Paul says: “ The Lord Jesus, on the night when he was delivered took bread . . . ”. Even if we admit that he was arrested some days before his crucifixion, we arrive at a twofold contradiction: if he was eating the Passover meal that night, the rite must have been carried out with unleavened bread, and this contradicts subsequent testimo- nies ; if he performed the rite “on the first day”, the disciples could not have been with him for his last Passover. The tradition of a rite in jail, as mentioned previously, cannot be taken seriously, but it underlines the problem. A sloppy solution could be to maintain that Paul is not inter- ested in chronological accuracy, but this would be quite unsatis- factory, for he is the most ancient witness and he transmits what he has received, and not his own words. However, Josephus’ testi- mony allows us to consider the problem from another angle and to resolve a pending issue 15. Since it involves the Slavonic version of the War, which is not well 15 known, a preliminary introduction is necessary. For a statement on the genu- ineness of the Slavonic version as reflecting a first edition by the author, see Appendix II in É. NODET, The Historical Jesus? Necessity and Limits of an Inquiry (New York 2008). Here are the main arguments: (1) In the prologue of the War, a work that received Emperor Titus’ official imprimatur, Josephus states he first wrote it in Aramaic, then translated it into Greek; later, in Ag. Ap. 1:50, he confessed to have been aided in Rome by “some assistants for the sake of the Greek”, meaning that he had to provide them with a Greek draft. (2) In Life § 360-365, he says he sent this draft to friends for comments, which amounts to a small-scale publication before the assistants’ help; so there were (at least) two forms of the Greek version, and the first one should have dis- appeared, but some copies can conceivably have survived in private libraries. (3) A Slavonic (Old Russian) version, translated from the Greek, was discov- ered in 1866; it is much shorter than the usual Greek, has a much more Jewish color, but displays some unexpected additions: two sections about Herod the Great’s would-be messiahship, and others on two unnamed characters, a wild man and a wonderworker, who can be recognized as John the Baptist (under King Archelaus, see Matt 3,1) and Jesus (under Pilate, one generation later). (4) Numerous Greek works were meticulously translated into Slavonic in the Xth or XIth century, with the aim of building a Christian library; they were sent from Constantinople, in the footsteps of the mission of Cyril and Methodius in the IXth century, sponsored by Patriarch Photius of Constantinople; the latter’s