When Was Jesus Crucified?
April 14th, 2010
Before I get too deep into this subject, I want to make it very clear that this is NOT a salvation issue. I’ve seen people go toe to toe over issues like this, but whether you believe that Jesus was crucified on Friday, Wednesday or any other day is not something that should drive a wedge between believers. It is the reason for His crucifixion and resurrection that is important, not when it happened.
That being said lets look at the events of the final week before the resurrection.
Every Christian knows that there were three important events that week. The first was what we “Triumphal Entry”. This is when Jesus arraigned for His entry into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey. Contrary to how tradition and modern thought paints this, riding on the back of a donkey was reserved for royalty. It was not a humble expression. Jesus was, for the first time in His life, declaring Himself as the Messiah and allowing Himself to be worshipped as such.
The second event was the crucifixion. Tradition tells us that this occurred on Friday, just prior to the Sabbath.
The third, and most important, was the resurrection. There is no doubt that this happened on Sunday following the Saturday Sabbath.
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John 20
1 Now the first day of the week Mary Magdalene went to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb.
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What the Christian church has, unfortunately, done was to separate the events of the crucifixion from the feasts the Lord set up to predict the event. The early Church tried to distance themselves from Hebrew traditions and worked up a system that would insure that the celebration of the crucifixion would never coincide with Passover. We need to remember that the Lord has set up many patterns in the scriptures and the fact that the crucifixion happened on Passover was the most important.
There are three spring feasts during the Passover season. They are Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread and the Feast of Firstfuits.
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Leviticus 23
5 On the fourteenth day of the first month at twilight is the LORD’s Passover. |
The Hebrews have two calendars, one civil and one religious. The month of Nisan is the seventh month on the civil and the first month on the religious calendar. Passover was designated to be held on the 14th of Nisan. This feast was extremely important and everyone was commanded to leave their homes and travel to Jerusalem to observe it.
Unleavened Bread followed Passover.
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Leviticus 23
6 And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the Feast of Unleavened Bread to the LORD; seven days you must eat unleavened bread.
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The final feast was Firstfruits.
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Leviticus 23
9 And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 10 “Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them: ‘When you come into the land which I give to you, and reap its harvest, then you shall bring a sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest to the priest. 11 He shall wave the sheaf before the LORD, to be accepted on your behalf; on the day after the Sabbath the priest shall wave it.
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Firstfruits was always held on Sunday, the day after the Sabbath. However, it’s important to know that Saturday is not considered the only Sabbath day. Feasts that have only one day are also Sabbaths. Unleavened Bread, which lasts seven days, has two, the first and last days of the feast. The Sabbath referred to in Leviticus 23:11 is the Saturday Sabbath.
We know that Jesus rose on Sunday morning from John 20:1 and that that day was the Feast of Firstfuits. Jesus was the firstfuit of the new covenant. While the calendar is a little foggy about what the actual date was, there is a clue in Genesis.
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Genesis 8
4 Then the ark rested in the seventh month, the seventeenth day of the month, on the mountains of Ararat.
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Anytime the Lord puts an “insignificant” fact in the scriptures, we should take notice. As I said, the Hebrews have two calendars, civil and religious. The religious calendar was instituted by Moses when the law was given. The calendar used in Genesis is the civil calendar. The seventh month on the civil calendar is the first month on the religious, Nisan. So the ark came to rest on the 17th of Nisan. The resting of the ark is symbolic of a new beginning, the firstfuits of a new world. By “coincidence” this is exactly three days after the day that Passover would have been. The feasts had not, yet, been instituted but, as the Rabbis say “Coincidence is not a kosher word”.
If, and I repeat…if, the Feast of Firstfuits landed on the 17th of Nisan the year that Jesus was resurrected, He would has risen exactly three days after Passover. Now, let’s look at the calendar.
If Sunday was the 17th of Nisan, then Passover would have begun at sundown on Wednesday. The following day, Thursday would have been the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Tradition says that Jesus was crucified on Friday and that in order to keep from having the three bodies on the crosses during the Sabbath, the legs were to be broken to speed up their deaths.
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John 19
31 Therefore, because it was the Preparation Day, that the bodies should not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away.
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There are two clues here that tell us what day it actually was. First, it was the Preparation Day. The day before Passover was a day of preparation. The women would gather everything together for the Passover meal so that it would be ready by sundown. Part of the preparation was the killing of the unblemished lamb that was to be eaten before midnight that night. The lamb was killed between 3:00pm and 5:00pm, just before sundown.
This lamb was chosen three days prior and brought into the home. The family would treat this lamb as a pet and when it was killed it was truly a sacrifice by the entire family. If Passover was on Wednesday, then the lamb was chosen the previous Sunday. This was the same day that Jesus revealed Himself to be the Messiah and, in the words of John the Baptist, “The lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world”.
The second clue in John 19 is the statement that this Sabbath was a “high day”. This was not a Saturday Sabbath, but a high feast day. It could only be Passover. This would mean that Jesus died just before sundown on the Preparation Day at the same time that every Hebrew family was killing their own sacrificial lamb. This is not to be confused with the Day of Atonement when the High Priest would offer a sacrifice in the Holy of Holies for the sins of the nation. This was a sacrifice made by every Hebrew family in their own home. A much more personal sacrifice.
Another important point comes in Jesus’ own words.
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Matthew 12:40
40 For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
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If Jesus was crucified on Friday, He could not have risen on Sunday. Jesus was very explicit when He said “three days and three nights”. Do the math. There just aren’t three days and three nights between Friday evening and Sunday morning.
