dabowers said

I had a response to a comment I had about John claiming Jesus was crucified a day before Matt/Mark/Luke claimed he was. The commenter said it was due to the “high Sabbath”. I was unaware of a “high Sabbath”.
John 19:31 Reference: The mention of a “high day” Sabbath during Jesus’ crucifixion indicates the weekly Sabbath coincided with an annual feast day, specifically a Passover Sabbath.
Is this for real, and does this explain the discrepancy?

  

It’s close to being for real, but IIUC, it misses on one key point … a “high Day Sabbath” is the Sabbath associated with the high day … it’s a high day Sabbath whether it coincides with the weekly Sabbath or not.

But Robert is quite right … the three closely synoptic gospels and the arguably “quasi-synoptic” gospel simple disagree about the timing of the crucifixion relative to Passover.  In John, the Last Supper is a meal together the day before Passover, not the Passover meal, which is either dueling symbolisms or one of the two sides better understanding Judean practices.

Under the dueling symbolisms, the Last Supper as the extension of the Passover meal is dueling with the Crucifixion being a new Passover covenant with the preparation of the Lamb being the crucifixion and Jesus in the tomb being what enables the Angel of Death to pass over believers in Jesus.

Under the “better understanding Judean practices”, the whole side of the passion narrative where High Priests are rushing to get the trial and the crucifixion done “in time” would be silly if the Passover Sabbath had already started … there is no time to regain ritual purity before the start of Passover if Passover started at the previous sundown.

There is also “three days / three nights” language which doesn’t line up with the conventional synoptic passion to finding the empty tomb timeline, but which can be made to line up with John’s narrative if the Passover Sabbath starts Thursday Evening … Crucifixion during Thursday Day / Thursday night / Friday Day / Friday Night / Saturday Day / Saturday Night, and on Sunday shortly after dawn it is discovered that the tomb is empty and so the metaphorical Temple has been rebuilt in three days and three nights.

But that doesn’t help anything, really, in terms of sorting out who has the “real” story and who has the corrupted version.

Maybe John realizes that three days / three nights doesn’t work with the material he has, so he “fixes” it. Maybe three days / three nights is a later interpolation into the synoptics, so they weren’t “wrong” about it until the interpolation contradicted them after the fact. Maybe what we are reading are 2nd century redactions of the synoptics by people who don’t understand purity laws and the high Sabbaths versus the weekly Sabbaths as well as the original 1st century authors, so their focus is on upgrading the importance of the Eucharist by moving the Last Supper to coincide with Passover despite the contradictions it introduces in the story.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯