Few paintings are as recognizable or as cherished by Christians as The Last Supper by Renaissance Master Leonardo da Vinci. The iconic fresco on a wall in the Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, Italy, is renowned the world over for capturing one of the most significant moments in the life of Christ.

The setting is the eve of Passover, when Jesus instructs his followers about the significance of his pending sacrifice as the Lamb of God. His body will be offered up for the sin of the world and his life poured out for the forgiveness of sins in a new covenant – events which Christians remember even to this day every time they gather around the Eucharistic table.

Unfortunately there is a serious problem with Da Vinci’s painting: this classic work of art is in error in almost every historical detail!

Rather than depicting the evening Passover seder Yeshua celebrated with his twelve Jewish apostles in Jerusalem, probably in the spring of the year 30, in a borrowed upper room on Mt. Zion, we see thirteen Europeans in Renaissance clothing having a midday meal in an Italian palace. What’s wrong with this picture?

First, a Passover seder (meal) always occurs in the evening, as it did when the Israelites were preparing to flee Egypt. The Last Supper by contrast is depicted in the daytime, as evident in the blue sky and white clouds visible through the rear windows.

Second, the main course was not fish and bread, as in the painting, but matza (unleavened bread) and a lamb from the Temple sacrifices, which was roasted. Fish and bread were a fine first-century meal, indeed one Jesus shared with his disciples on other occasions (cf. John 21:9). But a seder is not kosher without matza, the bread of affliction that the Israelites prepared hastily before departing. The bread did not have time to rise but was eaten in an unleavened state.

Third, in Da Vinci’s version, Jesus is seated upright at the center of a long linear table, surrounded on either side by his apostles, similarly seated upright on benches or chairs. In actual fact the manner of festive eating in Second Temple Jewish history was reclining upon the floor on cushions, leaning to the left in the manner of free men, around a triclinium, a three-sided (u-shaped) table, in which the guest of honor, in this case Jesus, would have been placed in the second position from the right end.

Great art. Dreadful history.

THE GREAT FESTIVAL OF REDEMPTION, commemorating the deliverance of the children of Israel from the enslaving hand of an Egyptian despot, Pharaoh, is a landmark event in Jewish history and God’s covenant story. So important was Passover to Jesus and his devout parents that every year they would go up to Jerusalem to celebrate it (Luke 2:41). Later (using a familiar Hebraic idiom, attested in other ancient Jewish literature), Jesus said to his disciples, “I have earnestly desired to eat the Passover with you before I suffer” (Luke 22:15)

Regrettably the concrete historical matrix of the life of the Jewish Sage, Rav Yeshua (Rabbi Jesus), was largely displaced by the emerging and largely Gentile church of the 2nd - 4th centuries by a more metaphysical and Westernized milieu. The Galilean teacher was recast in the image of the prevailing culture – such as an Emperor in the Byzantine era and a Renaissance man in Da Vinci’s mural.

Even as Joseph’s brothers could not recognize him attired in Egyptian garb, for centuries Jewish people have had great difficulty recognizing Jesus as one of their own. Fortunately this is changing. With the restoration of the State of Israel, Jewish scholarship has taken a leading role in reclaiming Yeshua as a Jewish sage and restoring the lost image of the man Christians call Savior and Lord. It is another of the many debts we owe to Israel.

This year, why not commemorate the life of Jesus by studying Jewish sources and celebrating the biblical Feast of Passover? Remember and rejoice in his “Last Supper” – but in its authentic historical setting