Bible Questions - What Day Was Jesus Crucified ?

hotly debated. While the early church set the day of crucifixion on Friday, the biblical evidence for a Friday crucifixion is very weak. The reason for setting Friday as the day comes from this verse:

“And now when the even was come, because it was the preparation, that is, the day before the sabbath…” (Mark 15:42).

On the day before every Sabbath was a day of preparation so no work would be done on a Sabbath. The early church understood this to mean the weekly Sabbath (Friday sundown to Saturday sundown) and, since Jesus was crucified on the day of preparation, they assumed it must have been on a Friday afternoon. The error in this logic is that the Sabbath referred to in Mark 15 was the Feast of Unleavened Bread. This is the Feast of the Passover in celebration and remembrance of the Israelites being delivered from Egyptian bondage.
Read More at http://www.believersworld.net/2014/04/bible-questions-what-day-was-jesus.html
 
It took me ten years to prove it... Jesus died on a Wednesday. The First Passover according to Exodus chapters 12 to 16 show that this day, 14 Nisan (also called Abib), was a Wednesday.

From my study, http://abdicate.net/book.aspx

How can Jesus have celebrated the Passover and still be the Passover?
Exodus 12 sets the rules for the Passover. Take the lamb and set it aside on the tenth day of the first month (12:3), Nisan. On the fourteenth, at evening (12:6), the lamb is to be slaughtered, roasted whole, and then eaten in haste, with bitter herbs and unleavened bread (12:8 !). Leviticus is not so precise in its instructions, and Numbers recounts the actual activities of the first Passover. Therefore, you must understand that by Jesus following the letter of the law as He told Moses to do in Exodus 12 and Due 16, He had to have the Passover on the fourteenth – a full 23 hours before everyone else! The rabbi’s, over time, distorted the truth and they celebrated the Passover on the wrong day all the way to the days of Jesus! This is why Jesus kept the Passover a day before the Pharisees did. This is also why the accounts of the Gospels seem to be contradictory – John accounted the whole story of Jesus’ last days – that the Jews keep the Passover on the fifteenth of Nisan after sunset not the fourteenth! During my travels, I befriended a Jew from Israel. He invited my family and me to participate in the Seder Meal (Passover), and being Americans and circumcised (12:48), we accepted. I was invited because I asked my friend which day they keep the Passover – he said the fourteenth at night – and I said, “But doesn’t that make it the fifteenth?” He said “Yes”. He didn’t think anything of it.

Jesus' last Passover was precisely on the evening of Nisan 14, 3787 (9 April 27 AD), a Wednesday, they killed the Passover lamb after sunset and ate their meal by midnight as is instructed in Exodus 12. Read carefully what the Scriptures say about the Passover. It is such an important feast that it is the only one that can be made up if missed for specific reasons! (Num 9:10-13) That same night, very late, they came for Jesus, held a mock trial, and had Him sent to Pilate for judgment. As seen in John 19:14 and Matthew 27:62, that was the "day of preparation" for the Passover of the Pharisees, on the wrong night. The series of events are that Jesus had His last Passover after the sunset of the thirteenth of Nisan; (making it the fourteenth); they took Jesus around 3am, still the fourteenth of Nisan. I keep repeating this because when you've lived all your life with the West celebrating events at midnight for the date change, it makes it hard to remember days change at sundown in the Middle East. John 18:28 says they took Jesus to the hall of judgment but they did not go in because they did not want to become unclean and ineligible of partaking part in the Passover, Numbers 9:7-14. It took 29 days to become clean once one was made unclean according to Numbers, but the Pharisees twisted the truth into some ritual, which bore no resemblance to the truth. So read what Paul says:

I Corinthians 5:7-8 “Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us: Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”

The Feast of Unleavened Bread starts at Passover! Read the original account, the fourteenth to the twenty-first!

Exodus 12:18-20 “In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at even, ye shall eat unleavened bread, until the one and twentieth day of the month at even. Seven days shall there be no leaven found in your houses: for whosoever eateth that which is leavened, even that soul shall be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he be a stranger, or born in the land. Ye shall eat nothing leavened; in all your habitations shall ye eat unleavened bread.”

Here is where the Pharisees got it wrong. They misinterpret Numbers 28 and Leviticus 23:

Numbers 28:16-17 “And in the fourteenth day of the first month is the passover of the LORD. And in the fifteenth day of this month is the feast: seven days shall unleavened bread be eaten.”

Leviticus 23:5-6 “In the fourteenth day of the first month at even is the LORD'S passover. And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the feast of unleavened bread unto the LORD: seven days ye must eat unleavened bread.”

They’re reading that the seven days start with the fifteenth, meaning they should eat the Passover (the feast) on the evening of the fifteenth because it was to happen after sunset, totally blowing off what Exodus 12 commands. The Passover meal is to be eaten with unleavened bread and this is why they lumped it into actually being eaten on the evening of the fifteenth. This isn’t a contradiction, but a misunderstanding of the truth because of tradition. This explains how the Lord can keep the Passover and yet still be the Passover Lamb on the same day!

Consequently, John shows that only Jesus and His disciples had already celebrated Passover. It's always man that changes God's commandments. Jesus kept the commandment as He had given it to Moses. Jesus was presented at 6 am, rejected by the Jews, and led away to be crucified. At 9 am, He was put on the cross, Mark 15:25. At noon all darkness fell on the whole land until around 3 pm when Jesus gave up the ghost. (This is not an eclipse of the sun because the earth was between the moon and the sun!) Now since the Pharisees taught53 that the fourteenth of Nisan is Passover and the fifteenth is a Sabbath, the guards went along to break the legs of those crucified to expedite their death because the Sabbath (Passover) was coming. Again, these verses state that it is the day of preparation and that it was a High Day as opposed to a normal Sabbath. Paradigm three smashed - Jesus couldn't have died on a Friday and remained in the tomb for three days and then have Mary and the others come "after the Sabbath" to anoint Him, which had already been done on the eighth of Nisan, if you remember, by Mary, John 12:3!

John 19:31-37 "The Jews therefore, because it was the preparation, that the bodies should not remain upon the cross on the sabbath day, (for that sabbath day was an high day,) besought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away. Then came the soldiers, and brake the legs of the first, and of the other which was crucified with him. But when they came to Jesus, and saw that he was dead already, they brake not his legs: But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water. And he that saw it bare record, and his record is true: and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe. For these things were done, that the Scripture should be fulfilled, A bone of him shall not be broken. And again another Scripture saith, They shall look on him whom they pierced."

Notice that John speaks of the general populace as "the Jews" so as not to include himself in that group. John is pointing out that there is a difference between the beliefs of Jesus and those of the establishment. So many wonderful prophecies fulfilled in these verses of John. Not only does it mention the ones about not a bone being broken, Psalms 34:20 , and His side being pierced, Zechariah 12:10 , but that the sacrificial lamb was NOT to have a broken bone!!! (Exodus 12:46)
 
hotly debated. While the early church set the day of crucifixion on Friday, the biblical evidence for a Friday crucifixion is very weak. The reason for setting Friday as the day comes from this verse:

“And now when the even was come, because it was the preparation, that is, the day before the sabbath…” (Mark 15:42).

On the day before every Sabbath was a day of preparation so no work would be done on a Sabbath. The early church understood this to mean the weekly Sabbath (Friday sundown to Saturday sundown) and, since Jesus was crucified on the day of preparation, they assumed it must have been on a Friday afternoon. The error in this logic is that the Sabbath referred to in Mark 15 was the Feast of Unleavened Bread. This is the Feast of the Passover in celebration and remembrance of the Israelites being delivered from Egyptian bondage.
Read More at http://www.believersworld.net/2014/04/bible-questions-what-day-was-jesus.html

This is really one of the hardest things to determine. The answers run all over the map.
Daniel 9:25, "So you are to know and discern that from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; it will be built again, with plaza and moat, even in times of distress. Then after the sixty-two weeks the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing.

There is one thing to consider and it is that A decree was given by the king of Babylon for the Jews to return home after 70 years of captivity. If we begin our thinking at the time of Neh. 2:1-8 which fits all the requirements of the decree to send the Jews back to Jerusalem, that then gives a starting time of Nisan 445 B.C.

The 1st 7 weeks which is 48 years gets us to 397 B.C. and to Malachi and the end of the Old Test.
Sixty two weeks later, or 434 years and we are at the Messiah. From the 1st month of Nisan to the 10th of Nisan ,April 6 of A.D. 32 are exactly 173,880 days. Dividing them according to the Jewish year of 360 days, we come to 483 years which is 69 Sevens. That day is the day Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the young colt and offered Himself as the Messiah. That day was a Sunday!
 
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