The second difference is perhaps more pronounced and has to do with whether Jesus died on the day of preparation for the passover or the day of passover itself.
If we take Mark to begin with and look at 14:12:
Now on the first day of the feast of Unleavened Bread, when the Passover lamb is sacrificed, Jesus’ disciples said to him, “Where do you want us to prepare for you to eat the Passover?”
This quote makes it clear that just as the Passover lambs were being sacrificed Jesus is with his disciples discussing with them where they are to make preparations to eat the passover. Reading on in the narrative, they go and prepare the passover and then eat it with him.The Jewish day ticks over from the day of preparation for the passover to passover day as the stars come out that evening and Jesus then sits down and eats the passover meal with his disciples before his death.
All well and good so far, but John is very different. The final meal in John starts in chapter 13 with the washing of the disciples feet and there is a long discourse over the next few chapters until we get to chapter 19 where in verse 1-16 Pilate starts by having Jesus flogged and ends by handing him over to be crucified. Then in John 19:14 we read:
(Now it was the day of preparation for the Passover, about noon.) Pilate said to the Jewish leaders, “Look, here is your king!”
In John at noon on the day of preparation for the passover, when the passover lambs were being sacrificed, Jesus is already in Pilates hands and about to be crucified. How then can he also be talking to his disciples about eating the passover that evening as it says in Mark. (NB in Exodus 12 the passover lamb is to be slaughtered on the fourteenth day of the month at twilight and eaten that same evening after being roasted. In Jesus day they slaughter had to start earlier in the day so that the priests could sacrifice enough lambs for everyone in Jerusalem.)
Mark and John have different stories to tell. Mark is loading the meaning of The Last Supper into the passover meal while John is telling us that Jesus was sacrificed as our Passover lamb. While both these could be correct from a theological viewpoint, they clearly can't both be right as a historical reality.
Both accounts were written many years after the events they narrate are thought to have happened, and even well after Paul wrote his letters. I don't think these stories about Jesus can be used to reconstruct a reliable history. They are stories from ancient times that were circulating orally and changing, sometimes significantly, until the gospels were written. For me this makes the gospels less likely to describe an objective history that can be relied upon.
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