We all know from Papias not to trust Mark's chronology... which, by supreme irony, makes the base-chronology for our New Testament today. This blog has mooted theories that Palm Sunday was Sukkot AD 32, and that the paradosis - when the Sadducees turned Jesus over for likely crucifixion - was the Wednesday before Passover. Why, then, should Christians collapse it all into one Holy Week?
First, the Christians already had a ritual calendar - the Jewish calendar - by the time Mark and John 1-20 were being composed. Every time Jesus' followers observed the Passover, they were haunted by Jesus' ghost. Sometimes literally in asomatic visions - but that's another issue. Also since the palms are absent from the Synoptics, those Christians who did not know John - like Justin - would likely have thought of it as Processional Sunday.
The Processional Sunday works only in a large hall or on a street fit for a procession. Christians couldn't even observe such a solemnity until they had either.
If Processional Sunday lagged the rest of Holy Week in Christian Easter observance, that would explain the gospel confusion. Might also - in part - explain its disconnexion from the Maundy Thursday-through-Easter block. (Christians are stuck with the Saturday dead time, from Jonah's three-day prophecy.)
I conclude the Gospel of Mark was composed among a Christian congregation large and powerful enough that a Processional Sunday was possible. Further, this had been made integral to its Easter week - this, clearly, elsewhere than at Jerusalem. The Gospel of John shows (much) more evidence of being composed in stages, I'd say from Egerton; its source perhaps did not own a Processional Sunday as such. But John 1-20 as we have it today at least addressed fellow "Antiochene" Christians who did. It arranged its final chapters accordingly.
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