Marcos 15:42

And when even was now come, because it was the Preparation, that is, the day before the sabbath.

THE BURIAL OF JESUS

The day before the sabbath ... This is generally understood to mean that it was Friday, but the scriptures do not teach any such thing. See in my Commentary on Luke under Luke 22:7.

WHAT DAY WAS JESUS CRUCIFIED?

This question, admittedly difficult, actually relates to the promise Jesus made in Matthew 12:40 that he would be "in the heart of the earth three days and three nights"; and the importance of it is such that a careful study of the problem is here presented.

For generations, the view that Christ was crucified on Friday has prevailed and, since he rose very early on the first day of the week, even while it was yet dark (John 20:1), and if he was buried shortly before sunset on Friday, such would limit his stay in the tomb to one day and two nights, contradicting the Scripture which says:

For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth (Matthew 12:40).

Many devout students, in all ages, have found Friday crucifixion difficult of acceptance. R. A. Torrey, in 1907, wrote a book rejecting Friday as the day our Lord was crucified.[19] J. W. McGarvey gave a list of scholars who solved the problem by making Matthew 12:40 an interpolation.[20] And this writer must confess that the "explanations" which allegedly justify the Friday date have never been satisfactory.

THE ALLEGED EXPLANATION

The "three days and three nights" are held by many scholars to be a Jewish idiom meaning "any part of three days and three nights," as indicated by certain Old Testament passages: (a) Joseph put his brothers into ward "three days," yet he released them "the third day" (Genesis 41:17,18). (b) Rehoboam asked the people's delegation to "depart yet for three days, then come again to me ... All the people came to Rehoboam the third day as the king had appointed" (1 Kings 12:5,12). Queen Esther requested of her maidens that they "neither eat nor drink three days, night or day" ... "on the third day" she went to the king (Esther 4:16; 5:1). McGarvey was impressed with such examples, but he apparently did not notice the omission in every one of them of the key words "three nights." The Hebrew method of reckoning time was somewhat indefinite; but the proposition maintained here is that there are no known examples of "three days and three nights" being used idiomatically for part of three days and two nights!

McGarvey also made reference to Hebrew usage in the New Testament, in which Stephen said that Moses was "full forty years old," alleging, from this and other examples of the use of "whole" or "full" in connection with time periods, that if Jesus had meant three days and nights in their entirety, he would have used the term "full" three days and three nights. The view here is that the expression "three days and three nights" means exactly the same as if he had used "full," the use of such a word being made unnecessary by his mention of the three nights. The utter absence of the key words "three nights" from all of the Scriptures cited as proof of the alleged idiom disproves its existence: In fact, as far as has been determined by this student, there is no other example in the entire Bible except Jonah 1:17 and Jesus' quotations from that passage.

For these reasons, the idiom theory is not satisfactory. Torrey spoke thus:

There are many persons whom this solution does not satisfy; and this writer is free to confess that it does not satisfy him at all. It seems to me to be makeshift, and a very weak makeshift.[21]

It is refreshing to find that the distinguished Professor Emeritus of Physics, University of Tennessee, in Christianity Today, March 29,1974, questioned this idiom theory by pointing out that from Friday evening to early Sunday morning would be only a little more than 24 hours. "Can this be called three days and three nights? Really? Is not this just another supposition made to support a theory?"[22]

WHEN WAS THE CRUCIFIXION?

I. It was on the Preparation of the feast of Passover, meaning the day before the Passover began; and, since the Passover always began on the 15th day of Nisan, that means Christ was crucified on the 14th of Nisan. All four of the gospels confirm this categorically: (a) Matthew related how, on the day after Jesus was buried, "Now on the morrow, which is the day after the Preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees were gathered together unto Pilate" requesting a guard at the grave (Matthew 27:62). (b) Mark recounted how Joseph begged the dead body of Jesus from Pilate on "the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the sabbath" (Mark 15:42). (c) Likewise Luke stated that the burial took place on "the day of Preparation, and the sabbath drew on" (Luke 23:53). (d) The apostle John records that the trial of Jesus before Pilate took place "on the Preparation of the Passover: it was about the sixth hour" (John 19:14). This makes it absolutely certain that Christ was crucified on the 14th of Nisan.

But, like any given day of the month, the 14th of Nisan could occur on any day of the week. Mark and John both mentioned that the Preparation was the day before the sabbath; and, if that had been all the information we have, it could be safely declared that Christ was crucified on Friday, which is the day before the ordinary sabbath, that is, Saturday. However, "that sabbath" was not an ordinary sabbath. John's gospel declares:

The Jews therefore, because it was the Preparation, that the bodies should not remain on the cross upon the sabbath (for the day of that sabbath was a high day), asked of Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away (John 19:31).

John's identification of the sabbath immediately after the Preparation mentioned by all the gospels makes it certain that it was not Saturday the ordinary sabbath at all, but another kind of sabbath. Exodus 12:16 instructed Israel to observe both the first and seventh days of the Passover week as days of rest and holy convocation upon which occasions no work at all could be done. Thus the 15th of Nisan was a sabbath regardless of what day of the week it was. These special sabbaths were called "high days," and John identified the sabbath following the Preparation as that kind of sabbath, "a high day."

The argument from John 19:31 against Friday crucifixion is reinforced by other considerations: (a) Harmonies of the gospel accepting Friday as the day of the crucifixion do not assign any event to Wednesday, skipping from Tuesday night to Thursday afternoon.[23] As Rusk said:

About one third of the Gospels is taken up with the record of the events of the last week of the life of Christ. We might infer that such a detailed account is intentional and is designed to relate all the events of this short time with the utmost detail. Yet, in order to preserve the hypothesis of the Friday crucifixion, all harmonies of the gospels call for an entire day on which there is no account of any activity on the part of Jesus, a day of silence in the midst of this very busy week, a day usually designated as Wednesday. The Gospels say nothing about any such day of silence. It is an invention designed to support the Friday thesis.[24]

(b) Jesus' fulfillment of the type seen in the passover lambs does not fit Friday crucifixion at all. If it is assumed that Christ was crucified on Friday, then the Passover began on Saturday, and "six days before the passover" (John 12:1) was Sunday when the supper was made for Jesus with Lazarus present, and the triumphal entry would then have been on Monday the day after that. That is clearly incorrect. However, if he was crucified on Thursday, then the supper was on Saturday "six days before the Friday Passover" and the triumphal entry was on Sunday, as generally acknowledged. All of this ties in with the Lord's being the antitype of the passover lamb. To have fulfilled, the type, Jesus had to be selected on the tenth day of Nisan, kept "shut up" until the fourteenth day, and slain in the afternoon of the fourteenth day. No event in the whole period can be viewed as the "selection" of Jesus except the triumphal entry. That event occurred on the tenth of Nisan, and the fourteenth would therefore be Thursday, and not Friday. In the intervening three days between the tenth and the fourteenth, Jesus appeared in Jerusalem many times, always within a sabbath day's journey, spending each night in Bethany. This would be the lamb "kept up," according to the type.

(a) A third source of corroboration for this view comes from Matthew's use of the plural "sabbaths" (Matthew 28:1). The Greek text in this place is specific, "end of the sabbaths,"[25] showing that there were back-to-back sabbath days when our Lord slept in the tomb, these being Friday, the first day of the Nisan Passover, and Saturday immediately following, which was the ordinary sabbath. The theory of Friday crucifixion contradicts Matthew's revelation that there were plural sabbaths involved.

The above considerations have been considered by many students of the Bible for many years as sufficient grounds for believing in a Thursday crucifixion; but the matter could not be proved, really without a definite knowledge of exactly what year Jesus was crucified. This author wrote in his Commentary on Matthew in 1968 that "It can never be known what day of the week was the 15th of Nisan until the overriding question of what year is fixed" (my Commentary on Matthew, Matthew 12:40).

SCIENTIFIC CONFIRMATION

The significance of this review of the question lies in the fact that Roger Rusk, Physics Professor Emeritus of the University of Tennessee, has recently related the scientific work of Herman H. Goldstine to the problem in hand. In Goldstine's book, New and Full Moons, an exciting new tool has been added for use in determining ancient dates. As Rusk said:

The principal equations describing the positions and motions of the moon, which require enormous quantities of time for computation by hand. were fed into a very sophisticated computer that completed the calculations, giving the exact times for some 66,000 new moons and full moons. These calculations should now be taken into account by all students of history who seek a chronological scale for these early centuries.[26]

From these scientific calculations, Rusk calculated the following table for the years A.D. 25-36:

<LINES><MONO>

THE NEW MOONS NEAR EQUINOX

A.D. Date Hour Day

25 March 7 9:39 PM Thu Fri Sat Fri March 22 26 April 6 6:50 AM Sat Sat Sun Sat April 20 27 March 26 8:24 PM Wed Thu Fri Thu April 10 28 March 15 3:01 AM Mon Mon Tue Mon March 29 29 April 2 8:06 PM Sat Sun Mon Sun April 17 30 March 22 8:22 PM Wed Thu Fri Thu April 6 31 March 12 12:52 AM Mon Mon Tue Mon March 26 32 March 29 10:31 PM Sat Sun Mon Sun April 13 33 March 19 1:04 PM Thu Fri Sat Fri April 3 34 March 9 5:48 AM Tue Tue Wed Tue March 23 35 April 7 2:03 PM Wed Thu Fri Thu April 22 36 March 28 6:26 AM Mon Mon Tue Mon April 11>MONO>LINES>

Only twice in this twelve-year period did the fourteenth of Nisan (the day our Lord suffered) fall on a Friday, namely, in 25 A.D. and in 33 A.D. This means that if the Lord suffered on Friday, he died in either 25 or 33 A.D., one of these days being too early and the other too late. But what about Thursday? The fourteenth of Nisan began on Thursday in 27 A.D. and in 30 A.D., the latter being the date usually agreed upon by scholars as the year of our Lord's death. Thus, scientific evidence harmonizes with Thursday crucifixion, but not Friday crucifixion.

Dogmatism is not in order when considering a question so long pondered with diverse conclusions; but we may safely say with Rusk:

The rules governing the observance of Passover and the astronomical

limitations governing the application of these rules combine to make Thursday, April 6, A.D. 30, the most plausible of the dates suggested for the crucifixion of Christ.[27]

Therefore, with regard to Mark 15:42, "the Preparation" means the day before Passover, thus the 14th of Nisan, which was the day our Lord suffered; and Mark's word here that it was the day before the sabbath cannot mean that it was Friday, but that it was the day before the high day (Nisan 15), also called a sabbath. In the light of this, there is no way to make the Last Supper coincide with the paschal meal; the Saviour was in the tomb when Israel ate the passover after sundown the night Jesus was crucified. Since all four Gospels concur in this fact, it is unaffected by any question of what day Jesus suffered, whether Thursday or Friday. See note under Luke 22:7 in my Commentary on Luke.

[19] R. A. Torrey, Difficulties in the Bible (Old Tappan, New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1907).

[20] J. W. McGarvey, Jesus and Jonah (Cincinnati, Ohio: The Standard Publishing Company, 1896), p. 6.

[21] R. A. Torrey, op. cit., p. 104.

[22] Roger Rusk. "The Day He Died" (Christianity Today, Vol. 18, No. 19), p. 4 (720).

[23] A. T. Robertson, A Harmony of the Gospels (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1922), pp. 188-189.

[24] Roger Rusk, op. cit., p. 4 (720).

[25] Nestle Greek Text (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1972).

[26] Roger Rusk, op. cit., p. 6 (722).

[27] Ibid.