The Climax of the Gospel Study
Walking with Jesus through the Final Days of His Mortal Life
Eric D. Huntsman and Trevan G. Hatch, "The Climax of the Gospel Study: Walking with Jesus through the Final Days of His Mortal Life," in Greater Love Hath No Man: A Latter-Day Saint Guide to Celebrating the Easter Season (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 1–12.
Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. (John 10:17–18)
Peter Paul, Rubens, The Entombment. Wikimedia Commons
In 1838 Joseph Smith taught, “The fundamental principles of our religion is the testimony of the apostles and prophets concerning Jesus Christ, ‘that he died, was buried, and rose again the third day, and ascended up into heaven’, and all other things, are only appendages to these, which pertain to our religion.”[1] Because the good news of Jesus’s saving suffering, death, and resurrection is the heart of the restored gospel, Latter-day Saints should know, and indeed savor, the accounts of his final days and hours as well as any other Christians. However, while some Christian faith traditions have created formal celebrations of the events of Jesus’s last week, in the Latter-day Saint community we typically do not have church-sponsored events around these holy days. As a result, without formal observances of days like Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, and Good Friday, and with only varying success in how we sometimes celebrate Easter itself, taking the opportunity to study and reflect upon the last week of the Savior’s life often escapes us. His atoning sacrifice and resurrection remain the center of our doctrine, to be sure, but is an appreciation of the events that surrounded these cosmic realities rooted deeply in our hearts?
Regarding what much of the Christian world calls “Holy Week,” Elder Gerrit W. Gong of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles has taught, “The sacred events between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday are the story of hosanna and hallelujah. Hosanna is our plea for God to save. Hallelujah expresses our praise to the Lord for the hope of salvation and exaltation. In hosanna and hallelujah we recognize the living Jesus Christ as the heart of Easter and latter-day restoration.”[2] One powerful way that we—as individuals, as families, or as groups of friends—can plant the saving mission of Jesus more deeply in our hearts is to immerse ourselves in the gospel accounts of his final week, especially each year as we approach Easter. Mindful celebration of holidays provides us potent opportunities to both learn and teach. As we study the scriptural accounts of the Savior’s last week and discuss them with our families and friends, we deepen our desire, as Elder Gong has noted, to shout hosanna and sing hallelujah.
Martin Kähler (1835–1912), a prominent German theologian, once famously observed that one could call the Gospels “passion narratives with extended introductions.”[3] What he meant was that the joyful stories of Jesus’s divine conception and miraculous birth in Matthew and Luke and then his ministry of service, teaching, and miracles in all four Gospels simply set the stage for what the gospel, or good news, really is: the glad tidings that Jesus overcame sin and death for us through his suffering, death, and resurrection. President Gordon B. Hinckley (1910–2008), fifteenth president of the Church, taught the same idea even more directly when he wrote, “There would be no Christmas if there had not been Easter. The baby Jesus of Bethlehem would be but another baby without the redeeming Christ of Gethsemane and Calvary, and the triumphant fact of the Resurrection.”[4] Using the New Testament accounts of Jesus’s last week as a guide, we invite you to join with us in a scriptural journey, walking with Jesus through the final days of his mortal life, standing at the foot of his cross, and running with joy to find his empty tomb.

Tintoretto, Crucifixion. Wikimedia Commons
Texts and Traditions: Studying and Celebrating the Passion and Resurrection Narratives
J. Kirk Richards, Son of Man. Used by permission.
The technical term for the suffering and death of Jesus Christ is “passion,” a term that originally meant “suffering” (Greek, paschō; Latin, patior/
This broader approach has several advantages. First, events earlier in the week were integral antecedents for Jesus’s final acts—preparing him, his disciples, and us as readers for the importance of what happened during the last evening and last day of his life. Second, combining the passion and resurrection narratives makes Jesus’s conquest of death the culminating act of his atoning work and leaves us with a living, risen Christ. Third and finally, studying and celebrating the whole week better prepares us for Easter, deepening our appreciation of it and strengthening our testimonies, which is the ultimate purpose of this book.
The power of scripture, both to teach and to impress, has led to our hope that readers will first use the scriptural accounts of Jesus to shape their own individual observance of Holy Week, providing material for both individual study and family traditions that will draw them closer to the Savior and build faith. In discussing the events of that week, we will draw upon all four Gospels, noting how the backgrounds of their authors and audiences as well as the particular themes and emphases of each have influenced how they told the story (for more detail on this, see Appendix A: Gospel Portraits). Because most scholars believe that Mark was the first Gospel written, when listing scripture references for each event or saying, rather than listing references in canonical order with Matthew first, our practice will be to list references from Mark first, followed by references from Matthew and Luke, allowing us to see how these later authors adopted, modified, omitted, or added to the earliest account. Because John was written later and apparently independently of the three so-called Synoptic Gospels, which provide accounts with similar perspectives, references from John will often provide important confirming evidence (what scholars call “double attestation”), though in some instances John will be the only source for a given incident.
Shutterstock.
To help better celebrate Holy Week, we have begun each chapter, and sometimes sections of chapters, with blocks of scriptural text that readers can use in their personal study or to read aloud with their families. Because the King James Version remains the official translation used by the English-speaking Church and is the version we normally use when speaking in church meetings or teaching classes,[6] we have left the KJV translation intact. However, in order to aid its use in the context of family devotionals or when reading it with friends, we have formatted it as a reader’s edition. That is, we have set it in paragraphs, used modern punctuation for marking discourse, and added some other conventions that will help with our later discussions of certain passages. In addition, some readers may want to use a contemporary version as a study aid to get a better feeling for the meaning of the text, after which we can move back to the KJV. A number of good translations are commercially available,[7] and our own fresh translation of the selected passages, which we used in our analysis of the event of Holy Week, is available online.[8] We have frequently quoted this new translation in our in-depth discussion of the various episodes treated in each chapter to help clarify the meaning of the text, although in most cases we have also referred to the wording in the King James Version so that readers can better understand and use that respected version. Because of Marcan priority and the often striking Johannine additions to the passion and resurrection accounts, the passages we have translated are mostly from Mark, regularly supplemented by passages from John, and occasionally drawing from Matthew and Luke when their accounts add something of particular significance. Most early Christians heard scripture read aloud, and we have found that reading from Mark to our families or with our friends can be particularly powerful because of its fast-paced and dramatic style.[9]
For our discussion of the events of Jesus’s last week that follows each block of scriptural text, however, we have drawn from all four accounts and included two important interpretive strategies. First, we always begin with exegesis, or interpretation, striving to understand what the original meaning was to the first audiences. Second, we then move to exposition, or application, frequently proposing Latter-day Saint readings that provide important applications to our own lives, often drawing upon Restoration scripture and the teachings of our modern leaders.[10] Early in some chapters we provide some specialized background material, and each chapter concludes with a list of detailed treatments for further reading. We have highlighted some particularly useful essays, articles, and books from these lists with text boxes that provide brief summaries. We also direct interested readers to the appendices that provide even more additional background and information.
Brigham Young University Jerusalem Center students join the Palm Sunday procession at the church at the Bethphage on the Mount of Olives on April 1, 2012. Eric D. Huntsman, used by permission.
This sort of analysis is not only useful for better understanding the texts; it can also help correct misconceptions or problematic applications of them. A particularly dangerous case of this can be found in passages that have been used over the centuries to fuel anti-Semitism. Examples of this are found particularly in Matthew, which is the most strident in its condemnation of scribes and Pharisees and includes a difficult scene in which the Jewish crowd before Pilate cries out, “His blood be on us, and on our children!” (Matt 27:25). Jesus, in fact, had much in common with the Pharisees, who certainly did not have a corner on hypocrisy. Bandying about unnuanced criticism of Pharisees today can unintentionally be taken as being critical of modern Rabbinic Judaism, since post-Temple Judaism developed largely from the Pharisaic school.[11] More troubling has been the use of the Matthew 27:25 passage as justification for accusing Jews of being “Christ-killers,” which has led to horrible acts against our Jewish friends through the ages.[12] Similarly, John often shares with Matthew a negative characterization of the Pharisees, but in both Gospels this characterization can probably be traced historically to conflicts Jewish Christians had with mainstream Jews in the synagogue in the decades after Christ.[13] In addition, John frequently uses the expression “the Jews” (Greek, hoi Ioudaioi) in a negative sense, although many scholars argue that these references are only to the Jewish upper classes, particularly in Judea and Jerusalem, and not to Jewish people as a whole.[14]
Dating Easter and the Events of Jesus’s Last Week
If it were not for cultural and, frankly, commercial reasons, Easter would be more important than Christmas, a holiday that delights Christians and secular people alike. Another reason why Easter may get less of our attention is because it often catches us unaware, being what is called a movable holiday. Our Christmas celebration occurs on a fixed date, occurring each year on December 25 in Western countries (Eastern Christians celebrate it on a different day, often on January 7), giving us a set date and a month or more to anticipate it. The date of Easter, on the other hand, was originally connected to the date of Passover, a holiday which, according to the Jewish calendar, falls on different days in our calendar each year.[15] After a series of decisions from the time of the emperor Constantine in the fourth century up through the Middle Ages, it was finally settled that Easter should always be celebrated on the first Sunday after the full moon falling on or after the spring equinox. Even so, differences in the calendars used by most Eastern Christians mean that the equinox, and hence Easter, often falls on a different day for them, but for Western Christians the celebration occurs between March 22 and April 23 depending upon the year.[16]
While the commemoration of Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection were marked in some form in the first two centuries of Christianity, more involved celebrations began after the emperors Constantine and Licinius first made Christianity a legal—indeed, favored—religion throughout the Roman Empire in AD 313, and then the emperor Theodosius made it the sole official religion in AD 380. The development of celebrations of not only Good Friday and Easter but for all of Holy Week is best documented in the late fourth and fifth centuries in Jerusalem, where both the places and events of Jesus’s final week could be movingly commemorated. For instance, a late fourth-century pilgrim named Egeria left a detailed account of her visit to the Holy Land and particularly Jerusalem, in which she not only described the holy sites in the city but, also described the different ceremonies and celebrations that were held in the major churches on the different days of Holy Week.[17]
Although specific events for each day of that week had already become well established by the time of Egeria, the New Testament Gospels themselves do not establish as firm a chronology of Jesus’s final week as is often thought. For instance, the only securely established day is the day of the Resurrection, which all four Gospels directly identify as “the first day of the week” (Mark 16:2; parallels Matt 28:1; Luke 24:1; see also John 20:1). Other chronological markers, however, are not always as clear. For instance, the Synoptics present the Last Supper, which is traditionally thought to have been a Thursday, as a Passover meal, while the Gospel of John maintains that Passover began at sundown after Jesus died the next day, which was the day after that final meal. Likewise, references to the Sabbath beginning soon after Jesus was buried (Mark 15:42; Luke 23:54‒56; John 19:31) have long led to the assumption that the crucifixion occurred on a Friday. However, given that important holidays like Passover were themselves holy days of rest, some have argued that these are references to a festal rather than weekly Sabbath, opening the possibility that Jesus might have died on a Thursday. Such uncertainties, together with difficulties in calculating exactly when Passover might have fallen in a given year, have led to a wide range of proposals as to the year in which Jesus died, with possibilities ranging from as early as AD 26 to as late as AD 36.
| Traditional Name | Events Marked |
| Lazarus Saturday | The raising of Lazarus; the anointing of Jesus in John. |
| Palm Sunday | The Triumphal Entry; the cleansing of the temple in Matthew and Luke. |
| Holy or Great Monday | Cursing of the fig tree; the temple incident in Mark; teachings in the temple. |
| Holy or Great Tuesday | Lessons from the fig tree; more teachings in the temple; the Olivet Discourse. |
| Spy Wednesday | The plot to kill Jesus; the anointing of Jesus in Mark and Matthew; Judas’s agreement to betray Jesus. |
| Maundy Thursday | The Last Supper; Gethsemane; betrayal and arrest of Jesus; Jesus before the Jewish authorities. |
| Good Friday | Jesus in the hands of the Romans; the Crucifixion; the burial. |
| Holy Saturday | Jesus in the spirit world. |
| Easter Sunday | The Resurrection; first appearances of the Risen Lord. |
All these questions are dealt with in more detail in Appendix B: The Chronology of Jesus’s Final Week. Our arguments there have led us to follow a primarily devotional chronology in the chapters of this book, a chronology that is based upon three main
considerations. First, the passion narratives in all four Gospels follow a basic sequence of events, which can be tentatively assigned days by working backward from Jesus’s resurrection on Easter morning by using relative time markers in the Gospel of Mark. Second, when there are historical uncertainties or when there are conflicts in when different Gospels place events, these differences can often be explained by theological or symbolic considerations that might have led an evangelist to depict the timing differently. Finally, accepting the traditional timing of the events of Jesus’s last week has the important benefit of allowing us to commemorate them at the same time that so many other Christian communities are celebrating them.
Suggestions for Latter-day Saints: Using Holy Week to Plant and Cultivate Faith
While formal observance of the various days of Holy Week, other than Easter, is not a part of our official practice in the Church, the reasons for this may be largely cultural. Joseph Smith and most other early Latter-day Saint leaders were from New England Protestant backgrounds, and the Puritan tradition in particular had largely eschewed many liturgical practices, including the marking of holy days, even Christmas, as being “too Catholic.”[18] While those serving in bishoprics or on ward councils might be able to use some of the ideas in this book in planning special holiday firesides or even sacrament meetings, our primary aim is to provide a resource for helping individuals and families use the week before Easter to prepare themselves for commemorating Jesus’s saving suffering, death, and resurrection not only through the scriptural texts but also by using Christian customs, music, art, and even foods to create their own Holy Week traditions. Much as intentionally using such elements in the month leading up to Christmas can help keep Christ as the center of that holiday, doing so for at least the week before Easter can help us strengthen our own faith even as we use such elements to inspire and teach our children. Regarding the potential power of family devotionals tied to the events of Holy Week, Robert Rees, currently visiting professor and director of Mormon Studies at Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, has observed, “Doing so would give Latter-day Saints an opportunity to focus their attention on Christ’s atonement and resurrection in a concrete, sustained way, thereby increasing their devotion and strengthening the Church.”[19]
The Huntsman family Easter créche, Easter morning, 2021. Eric D. Huntsman, used by permission.
In recent years some publications for Latter-day Saints have provided ideas for celebrating Holy Week with their families, especially families with younger children. These include Janet and Joe Hales’s A Christ-Centered Easter: Day-by-Day Activities to Celebrate Easter Week, Emily Belle Freeman’s Celebrating a Christ-Centered Easter, and Wendee Wilcox Rosborough’s The Holy Week for Latter-day Saint Families. Over the years we have come up with our own ideas for making the week meaningful, drawing upon Christian history and our own experiences. As a result, after our interpretation and application of daily scriptural texts, each chapter has short sections sharing the background of Christian traditions for that day. We have then made suggestions for Latter-day Saint families that include ideas from Restoration scripture, the teachings of modern prophets and apostles, and music from our own Children’s Songbook and hymnbook. These suggestions and ideas are also gathered for easy reference in Appendix D: Celebrating Holy Week—A Resource Guide for Latter-day Saints.
Marking the Days of Holy Week
Just as we demarcate holy places by dedicating temples, chapels, and homes, thereby setting them apart from the rest of the world, we can also mark or keep sacred time, delineating it from the ordinary and making it an occasion for us to feel the spirit more richly. The template for this, of course, is our weekly Sabbath, which is a day set apart to draw closer to God through prayer, the study of scripture, uplifting and inspiring music, and worship. Sacred time, however, is most transformative when we are truly intentional, focusing on its significance and using it not only to learn more about the Lord but also to be with him.[20] In his 2021 Easter message, delivered on Palm Sunday that year, Russell M. Nelson, seventeenth president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, invited us to make the week before Easter more holy, saying, “Now, after all that Jesus Christ did for you, I invite you to do something this week to follow His teachings. You might make your prayers more earnest. You could forgive someone or help a friend in need. You can start today on a new spiritual quest. This Easter, I encourage you to focus on the Savior.”[21]
When intentionally kept, holidays that commemorate events in the life of Jesus provide us opportunities to teach our children in a powerful way while deepening our own testimonies at the same time. The core of a transformational Holy Week observance is centered in the scriptural texts, which we can study individually, read together with our families, and share with our friends. While we may not celebrate the holidays in the way some other Christians have traditionally done, we can still benefit by “marking” them as important. By combining the scriptural passages associated with each day with reflection, prayer, uplifting music, inspiring art, and meaningful traditions on each of the days before Easter, we can truly make that week holy as we embark each year on a sacred journey that leads to salvation and eternal life. §
For Further Reading
Borg, Marcus J., and John Dominic Crossan. The Last Week: A Day-by-Day Account of Jesus’s Final Week in Jerusalem. New York: HarperCollins, 2006.
Bradshaw, Paul F., ed. Passover and Easter: Origin and History to Modern Times. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000.
Brown, Raymond E. The Death of the Messiah, 2 vols. New York: Doubleday, 1994.
Colson, Charles, et al. Christ in Easter: A Family Celebration of Holy Week. Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1990.
Freeman, Emily Belle. Celebrating a Christ-Centered Easter: Seven Traditions to Lead Us Closer to Jesus Christ. Salt Lake City: Shadow Mountain, 2015.
Hales, Joe, and Janet Hales. A Christ-Centered Easter: Day-By-Day Activities to Celebrate Easter Week. Salt Lake City: Eagle Gate, 2002.
Gulevich, Tanya. Encyclopedia of Easter, Carnival, and Lent. Detroit: Omnigraphics, 2002.
Holzapfel, Richard Neitzel. A Lively Hope: The Suffering, Death, Resurrection and Exaltation of Jesus Christ. Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1999.
Huntsman, Eric D. God So Loved the World. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2011.
———. Worship: Adding Depth to Your Devotion, 173–93. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2011.
Levine, Amy-Jill. Entering the Passion: A Beginner’s Guide to Holy Week. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2018.
Rosborough, Wendee Wilcox. The Holy Week for Latter-day Saint Families: A Guide for Celebrating Easter. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2016.
Notes
[1] “Questions and Answers, 8 May 1838,” Elders’ Journal (July 1838): 42–44, The Joseph Smith Papers, emphasis added.
[2] Gerrit W. Gong, “Hosanna and Hallelujah—The Living Jesus Christ: The Heart of Restoration and Easter,” Ensign, May 2020, 53.
[3] Martin Kähler, The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ, trans. Carl E. Braaten (German original, 1896; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1964), 80n11.
[4] Gordon B. Hinckley, “The Wondrous and True Story of Christmas,” Ensign, December 2000.
[5] Jacob Kremer, “paschō,” EDNT, 3.51‒52.
[6] General Handbook 38.8.39.1 notes, “When possible, members should use a preferred or Church-published edition of the Bible in Church classes and meetings. This helps maintain clarity in the discussion and consistent understanding of the doctrine. Other editions of the Bible may be useful for personal or academic study” (emphasis added).
[7] The standard academic and student translation is the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), which is published in the very useful study edition The Harper Collins Study Bible, revised and updated, ed. Wayne A. Meeks and Harold W. Attridge (New York: HarperCollins, 2006). A very solid and usable translation for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been produced by Thomas A. Wayment as The New Testament: A Translation for Latter-day Saints (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2018), and a new rendition of Mark has been published by Julie M. Smith, The Gospel according to Mark, BYU New Testament Commentary (Provo, UT: BYU Studies, 2018).
[8] For our translation, see
[9] R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark, The New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002), 9‒11, 15‒20.
[10] For a discussion of exegesis and exposition in studying the scripture from a Latter-day Saint perspective, see Eric D. Huntsman, “Teaching through Exegesis: Helping Students Ask Questions of the Text,” Religious Educator 6, no. 1 (2005): 107‒26.
[11] Trevan G. Hatch, A Stranger in Jerusalem: Seeing Jesus as a Jew (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2019), 168‒74.
[12] Raymond E. Brown, The Death of the Messiah, 2 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1994), 1.383‒397; Amy-Jill Levine, The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Misunderstood Jew (New York: HarperOne, 2006), 87‒110; Hatch, Stranger in Jerusalem, 198‒200.
[13] Hatch, Stranger in Jerusalem, 178‒84, 217‒21.
[14] For the basic meaning and use of the term itself, see Horst Kuhli, “Ioudaios,” EDNT 2:193‒97; for a discussion of its duplication in John, see Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John, The Anchor Bible 29‒29A (New York: Doubleday, 1966), lxx‒lxxv; Eric D. Huntsman, Becoming the Beloved Disciple: Coming unto Christ through the Gospel of John (Springville, UT: Cedar Fort, 2018), 78‒79, 86‒87n13;
[15] Passover is celebrated on the fifteenth day of the Jewish month of Nisan. Months in the Jewish calendar are based upon the cycle of the moon, with periodic adjustments to the year made to keep the months in sync with the seasons. As a result, Jewish months do not line up directly with the months of solar calendars. In addition, in the second century, early Christians were divided whether the crucifixion should be commemorated with the Jewish Passover, which began, like all Jewish days, at sunset on the day before. Although the Passover could fall on a different day of the week each year, all four Gospels agreed that Jesus rose from the grave on the first day of the week; more and more Christians began to insist that Easter should always be celebrated on a Sunday, with the commemoration of the crucifixion being calculated backwards from that. These disputes were finally settled by the Council of Nicaea, convened by the emperor Constantine in AD 325, which resolved that Easter should always be a Sunday after the vernal equinox, with our current practice emerging after a series of decisions in the following centuries. See Tanya Gulevich, “Passover,” Encyclopedia of Easter, Carnival, and Lent (Detroit: Omnigraphics, 2002), 464‒69, and Roger T. Beckwith, Calendar and Chronology, Jewish and Christian: Biblical, Intertestamental and Patristic Studies, AGJU 33 (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 278‒89.
[16] For a detailed discussion of the dating of Easter, see Gulevich, “Easter, Date of,” Encyclopedia of Easter, Carnival, and Lent, 81‒91, and Paul F. Bradshaw and Maxwell E. Johnson, The Origins of Feasts, Fasts, and Seasons in Early Christianity (Collegeville, MN: Pueblo Books, 2010), 39‒59. Even after the Council of Nicaea settled that Good Friday and Easter should be determined based upon the Sunday on or after the spring equinox, differences between the later Gregorian calendar used in the West and the Julian, Armenian, and Ethiopian calendars used in the East mean that that Easter is celebrated around the world on as many as three different dates each year.
[17] Bradshaw and Johnson, The Origins of Feasts, Fasts, and Seasons in Early Christianity, 60‒68, 114‒19; Anne McGowan and Paul F. Bradshaw, The Pilgrimage of Egeria: A New Translation of the Itinerarium Egeriae with Introduction and Commentary, Alcuin Club Collections 93 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2018), 91‒101, 167‒180.
[18] Robert Rees, “Why Mormons Should Celebrate Holy Week,” Dialogue 37, no. 3 (Fall 2004): 151‒67. For Rees’s observations regarding the possibly antiliturgical Puritan influence on the early Latter-day Saint movement, see 154–55.
[19] Rees, “Why Mormons Should Celebrate Holy Week,” 160.
[20] Eric D. Huntsman, Worship: Adding Depth to Your Devotion (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2016), 75‒77.
[21] Russell M. Nelson, “This Easter, Find Peace in Jesus Christ,” March 28, 2021, ChurchofJesusChrist.org.