For the past few years I have been following with keen interest and excitement the researches of Colin Humphreys into the last supper narratives in the gospels. Previously he had investigated the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and the ten unusual happenings recorded as accompanying that event. He also offered a new identification of the ‘star of Bethlehem’ as a comet that appeared in 5 bc. Finally, he made a fresh attempt to date the crucifixion of Jesus by using astronomical evidence for determining the likely year and also by proposing that Peter's reference in his Pentecost speech to the moon being turned to blood (Acts 2:20) was to a lunar eclipse in ad 33 at which the moon would indeed have had a blood-red appearance.

This new book returns to this last theme and offers a detailed study of the associated puzzles caused by the apparent discrepancy between the gospel of John and the other three gospels on the date of the last supper of Jesus. Colin's solution is a new version of the old theory that different Jewish groups may have used different calendrical systems, together with a proposal that Jesus held his meal not on the Thursday immediately preceding his crucifixion on the Friday but on the Wednesday evening, a view that allows a more adequate period of time for all the recorded events that have to be fitted in between the meal and the crucifixion.