Posted on 04/08/2012 12:32:29 PM PDT by FoxPro
I would like to demonstrate that Jesus’ crucifixion and death occurred not on a Friday (the sixth day of the week), as has been traditionally accepted, but rather on the previous day, Thursday (the fifth day of the week). My Holy Week chart, near the bottom of this page, displays my depiction of the week during which the following occurred during the month of Aviv (also called Nisan) of that year:
He is not the first to argue about which day these events took place. But I don’t find any of these revisionist arguments convincing.
Revisionist is exactly what it is. it drives me nuts that every single year at Easter and Christmas we get a bunch of pointy-headed numbskulls trying to tell their version of the “real” stories.
I just think it is an interesting mental exercise.
My job is working with dates, so I find this stuff interesting.
It is interesting, however so many people get hung up on these sorts of things, just to discredit the event, it just irks me.
Sorry, Have a blessed Easter with family and friends.
Yes and No!
If Jesus had died (and was buried) on Friday, he would have been 3 days in the tomb, since the Jews counted as a day even a fraction of that day. And a day begun at sundown. That is, Jesus would have been in the tomb for a very short time Friday, Saturday, and several hours of Sunday. However, I agree that would have been only 2 nights (Fri to Sat and Sat to Sun) and that has bothered me for a while since Jesus Himself said He would be in the tomb for 3 days and 3 nights.
Knowing that the decree to rebuild the temple was most likely issued on 444 BC, and following Daniel's prophecy, it seems that the best guess for the crucifixion is 33 AD. Does anybody know how to find out if Nissan 14 of that year was a Thursday or a Friday?
It is. But even more, what could be more interesting than learning about our Lord? I mean, we don’t have any problem memorizing football statistics, we discuss basketball plays until we are exhausted... but we hesitate at scholarly discussion of Biblical passages? WHY?
>> just to discredit the event, it just irks me.
I am not trying to discredit this, I am trying to illuminate it.
Yes. The traditional understanding was that Jesus rose on the third day. And it was also understood that the Jewish day begins with sunset, as one may gather from the wording in Genesis: “The evening and the morning of the first day” and so forth.
Because of the approaching Sabbath, the Jews asked Pontius Pilate to get the three crucifixions over with before sundown on Friday, so as not to dishonor the Sabbath.
The usual understanding is that Jesus began His public life at age 30, and died when he was 33. But it is not absolutely certain when Jesus was born. It is thought that probably there was a small miscalculation in deciding when the year 1 AD took place (from the various reigns described at the beginning of the Gospels), and the probably Jesus was born in 4 BC or maybe 7 BC. No absolute certainty about that, as far as I have heard. That is only significant if you have doubts about the gospel accounts and want to prove that the day given for the Sabbath disagrees with the day given for Passover.
Actually, the question about whether Passover occurred on the Thusday or the Friday is entirely a legitimate issue, but one which is dealt with in the bible, and incorporated into the Catholic/catholic tradition.
Jesus’ plan is to celebrate Passover with his disciples as a sign to Christians, yet be sacrificed himself later as a Passover sacrifice as a sign to the world. Praise the wondrous workings of God that this apparent contradiction is possible!
It is the passover which Jesus celebrates on THURSDAY evening. The day of unleavened bread was during the day on THURSDAY. Jesus himself is the paschal lamb offered on this feast. He means it when he says, “This is my body... This is my blood,” for it was on this day, THURSDAY, when he, the lamb of God, was consumed by the first Christians. That this is the passover is absolutely attested to:
“So they prepared the Passover. 14 When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table. 15 And he said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. 16 For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God.” — Luke 22:13b-16
Matthew is even plainer:
‘18 He replied, “Go into the city to a certain man and tell him, ‘The Teacher says: My appointed time is near. I am going to celebrate the Passover with my disciples at your house.’” 19 So the disciples did as Jesus had directed them and prepared the Passover. 20 When evening came, Jesus was reclining at the table with the Twelve. 21 And while they were eating, he said, “Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me.”’ — Matthew 27:18-21.
But how strange is this? The NEXT DAY after the passover meal, the Jews are preparing for the Passover ... again??? For after Jesus is flogged, John tells us “It was the day of Preparation of the Passover; it was about noon.” (John 19:13) Lest anyone have any doubt that the Passover was being celebrated on a Saturday, “Now it was the day of Preparation, and the next day was to be a special Sabbath.” (John 19:31).
Could Matthew and Luke depict a meal other than the Passover? No, it is celebrated when evening comes, after the Day of Preparation. How is it that John describes the events of the next day, and yet still insists that it is the Day of Preparation for the Passover? Because the Jews had conflicting ways of counting the Passover. The Essenes counted in one manner; the Sanhedrin in another. To this day, the Christian calculation of passover is inconsistent with the Jews.
The gospel is quite plain that Jesus is slain on the Day of Preparation for the Sabbath. That’s a Friday, folks.
Thus, God pulls off what seems to us to be a logical impossibility: Jesus celebrates the Passover meal with his disciples; yet also is himself the Paschal lamb.
In Matthew it is stated that the priest went to Pilot the day after the Preparation Day to demand that guards be placed at the tomb. Would the priest go to see a gentile on the Sabbath, and thus be unclean? Just a question.
Just so. The connection with the Passover involves typology, where a prophetic event in the Bible foreshadows another event, which “fulfills” it.
Thus, the account of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac involves a sheep caught in the bushes, which God accepts as a sacrifice in place of Abraham’s first-born son. That foreshadows the Passover, when the passover lambs are offered as a sacrifice in place of the first born sons. And that, in turn, foreshadows the Last Supper and the Crucifixion, in which Jesus is the Lamb of God, as he appears in the Book of Revelation.
One might also note that, in this way, the New Covenant does not cancel out and replace God’s old Covenant with the Jews (which God says is “forever” and Paul repeats that phrase in one of his epistles), but rather it fulfills it. The Jews are lovingly invited into the New Covenant, but they are not forced into it. Apparently it will take until the Last Days before they all come over.
Pilate
Would it make any difference if it is a regular Sabbath or a High Sabbath? I don't think so
Yes, He had the Passover supper the evening before Passover began, because He knew that He would not be alive for the actual Passover.
Great. I’m glad to see someone got this right after Christians have had it wrong for 2000 years. I am glad in the same way I am that Charles Taze Russell got it right that Jesus died on a “torture stake” rather than a cross as so many stupid Christians believed for all that time, and that also Joseph Smith was told by no less than Kolob-dwelling “Heavenly Father” and Lucifer’s brother Jesus that all the other denominations got it wrong, and that there was need for “another Testament of Jesus Christ.”
Really, what did all those other benighted people do for all those years. Sheesh!
I just thought it was an interesting discussion.
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