In the Evangelists’ Palm Sunday, John 12:12 is the one note in our known Gospels to describe the actual palms. (Luke 19:35-8 does not mention plants at all. We’ll get to th’others.) For John they are the βαΐα τῶν φοινίκων – the “Phoenician” plant being the Canaanite palm-tree. The question is whether John is indicative of Sukkot.
For the Tabernacles festival, the Jewish oral-torah has lulavim. Leviticus 23:40 transcribes the term KPT TMRYM. In Greek, Phoenician κάλλυνθρα, and branches ("clades") of other plants usually translated as “willow” and “osier”.
βαΐων had been waved for Simon the Hasmonaean 141 BC, per 1 Maccabees 13:51. Which branches, that book does not mention. Overall for this 1 Maccabees 13 does not use Sukkot language.
Mark 11:8 has the Jerushalmim strew their own clothes and also layers (στιβάδας) - not waves - of cutoffs from the field (κόψαντες ἐκ τῶν ἀγρῶν), on the road. Matthew 21:8 cuts “clade” branches, more like Leviticus, and strews them on the road.
NT scholars know elsewhere that Matthew and Luke both used Mark. Scholars are less sure of John’s relationship to any of these. Frankly we wouldn’t know it from the redaction-criticism of these parallels here.
It appears to me that branches are unideal for easing the passage of an entrance into a city. Cloaks, I can understand [UPDATE 2/27: got to cover up those camel turds]. Also hay and grasses and whatever soft weeds are found in fields.
In conclusion, Mark and Luke do not mark the date of Palm Sunday - at all. John waves branches of the same sort as in Maccabees; the type of branch is new, and more indicative of Sukkot. Matthew might even remember the waving of branches from other sources. If Luke had the same sources - Mark Goodacre would say, Luke had Matthew - Luke would have agreed with me both that branches are not going into the road, and that palms shouldn't be waved outside of Sukkot.
Score one for Simcha.
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