Can We Know the Exact Day When Christ was Crucified?

 First clue to finding the correct day: In Jesus’ time, the seventh day, Sabbath, or Saturday to us, was a day in which no real work is to be done. It followed the example of God at Creation. In Jeremiah 17:22, God says…nor carry a burden out of your houses on the Sabbath day, nor do any work, but hallow the Sabbath day, as I commanded your fathers.

That means they had to double-gather crops for food on Friday. So Friday was called the day of Preparation. As it so happens, all four Gospels record Jesus’ death and crucifixion on a Preparation day, so He was presumably crucified on a Friday (Matthew 27:62, Mark 15:42; Luke 23:54, and John 19:14). Friday was also accepted by the earliest church fathers and scholars through the ages.*

A second clue: Jesus is crucified on a Passover day, which happens once a year. John 18:28-29 says:

Then they led Jesus from Caiaphas to the Praetorium, and it was early morning. But they themselves did not go into the Praetorium, lest they should be defiled, but that they might eat the Passover. 29 Pilate then went out to them and said, “What accusation do you bring against this Man?”

This is important. Passover is on the 14th of Nisan, a specific date in a Hebrew month. So that means, of course, its day of the week changes year-to-year. But we now know that Jesus was crucified in a year in which Passover, Nisan 14, is on Friday. That narrows the field.

A third clue: As you can see in the previous verse, Jesus was crucified when Pilate ruled. Scholars have no trouble giving the years: AD 26-36.

A fourth clue: Luke 3:23 records that Jesus was “about 30 years of age” when He began His ministry. John records Jesus attending three Passovers: 2:23, 6:4, and 13:1. This narrows the field further (assuming birth in 2 BC, see my “Birth of Jesus”  blog), to Jesus being crucified from AD 28 up to the early 30s.

Nisan 14 happens on Friday only twice during this time period: 4/7/30 and 4/3/33. Which is it?

To get the final answer, oddly, we turn our attention to Sejanus, an extreme anti-Semite and Pilate’s boss through late 31 AD. Pilate, to conform to his wishes, did terribly brutal things to Jews, and denied their every request—just to tick them off. But Sejanus was assassinated 10/18/31, along with many of his appointees (but not Pilate). Then, Pilate’s new boss had an opposite approach to the Jews: “Leave the Jews alone unless they threaten to insurrect.” Pilate, to conform to this, to save his skin, had to be careful not to appear cruel.

 Here’s the question: Since Pilate was ambivalent toward Jesus (John 19:12), which leader was he under? Pilate couldn’t have been under Sejanus, so it must be that Jesus was crucified after his death, which happened 10/18/31. Of our two possible dates above, we now have only one choice:

Jesus was crucified on April 3, 33 AD

Maybe you’re thinking “That year selection seems sketchy, perhaps it was the other date and Pilate was just feeling good, or he wanted to give Sejanus a hard time.” Well--there are lots more confirming evidence about the date we chose—typical of the Bible’s layering of proofs, its unassailable accuracy.

 We can nail down the year a second way: check Daniel 9:25-26, KJV:

Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the command To restore and build Jerusalem Until Messiah the Prince, There shall be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks… 26 “And after the sixty-two weeks Messiah shall be cut off…

First off, the word “weeks” is incorrect—the Hebrew word is “sevens.” But seven what—days, months? If you make a week 7 years, then “seven weeks” becomes seven sevens, or 49 years, and “62 weeks” becomes 62x7, or 434 years. Then you get “from the going forth of the command…until Messiah there shall be” 49+434, or 483 years…and after (that), Messiah shall be “cut off”-- killed.

Then you need to know that the Jewish people had a 360-day lunar calendar, vs our 365.24 day solar one. So from the king's “command” to restore Jerusalem to the killing of Messiah is 483 x 360/365.24=476 of our years.

It also happens that the “command to restore and build Jerusalem” came under the 20th year of Artaxerxes (Nehemiah 2:1-6). Historical books confirm this as 444 BC. Adding 476 years (and considering that there is no year between 1BC and 1 AD), you get 33 AD as when Jesus was “cut off.”!

You’re still not convinced? Here’s a third proof where the sky comes in. A mathematician named Kepler proved (see, again, our "Birth" blog) that the positions of the stars and planets are absolutely predictable, in the past and future. Now note the period of darkness in His crucifixion. In Mathew 27:45:

Now from the sixth hour until the ninth hour there was darkness over all the land.

Changing Roman time to our time, this means darkness from noon to 3 pm—so 3 pm was when Jesus died (Matt 27:46-50), as soon as darkness ended.

Now turn to Acts 2:20, 22, and 31, where Peter, on the Day of Pentecost, only ten days after Jesus had been ascended into heaven after His resurrection, quotes a prophecy in Joel 2:30 (this was in the Old Testament, hundreds of years before He was born as a human), about the Anointed One—and then makes some intriguing remarks:

“The sun shall be turned into darkness, And the moon into blood…” Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a Man attested by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs which God did through Him in your midst, as you yourselves also know—he, foreseeing this, spoke concerning the resurrection of the Christ… ²³ Him, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death;

He is saying that this prophecy had recently been fulfilled--and that the crowd he was speaking to had seen these signs, the darkness AND the “blood moon”—which is a lunar eclipse. In such an eclipse, the sun, the moving earth, and the moon are lined up (briefly while the earth passes by) so that the moon only gets sunlight around the edges of the earth, but refracted through the earth’s atmosphere. The moon, from the earth, takes on an eerie redness. Jesus died when the moon was red. This would’ve spooked everyone (along with the graves being opened, and “zombies” walking about—oh, yeah—Matthew 27:52). So Peter is reminding everyone of this creepy event. Odd that the Gospels don’t record the blood moon when it happened (perhaps because it was not quite a complete eclipse), but this quote by Peter definitely proved it happened at His crucifixion. Evidently no one in the audience accused him of lying that those events actually happened; Scripture reports the good and the bad.

Well, as it so happens--There was a lunar eclipse and a blood moon on 4/3/33!

Thus you have my three proofs of His crucifixion day. (For a deeper analysis of how we can know the exact day, see my “birth” blog comments and the author’s notes in my source).

At the very same time Jesus died, Jewish priests were sacrificing innocent lambs to be eaten at Passover, a holiday celebrating freedom of slavery from Egypt, and for escaping the Angel of Death. This conjunction of Passover and Crucifixion was no coincidence; it was in the plan of God. Jesus was our Lamb, voluntary sacrificed and temporarily given to the hand of Satan as payment for our sins. Our salvation frees us from the slavery of sin, and His blood, applied to our hearts, saves us from eternal death—and brings us eternal life.

Thank You, God, for your incredible accuracy. Wise men follow the Lord.

What you can’t miss in all this, is an unassailable fact: from the moment our omniscient God flung the stars out in space, He positioned them knowing that there would be a redemptive plan that we would need to approach Him because of our sin. He knew then that His very own Eternal Son would have to die. His power then raised Him in Resurrection like He can raise us again—if we believe and follow His commands—with the help of the Holy Spirit given to us at our initial salvation. He left His love letter to us, His Word, the Bible. It is perfect in its accuracy, as we have seen here, as perfect as God is in His grace. Let us read His Words to us to learn how we can avoid Hell and make it to Heaven. Scripture says that most people go to Hell (Matthew 7:14). His Word is the way to life in heaven.

(PS: Some of these proofs are not on the DVD, but in the “study” section on bethlehemstar.com.

* In case some of you are still scratching your head about Jesus spending 3 days in the tomb, when He was crucified on Friday and resurrected on Sunday, there is a simple answer. Who said He had to spend 3 days in the tomb? Yes, Matthew 12:40 says “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.” Translators might have failed us here. The phrase “in the heart of the earth” doesn’t necessarily speak of the tomb—it may speak of in the core of Satan’s grasp. I’m using the reputed W.E. Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words. The Greek word “earth” doesn’t necessarily speak of burial. Quoting Vine’s again: “the earth (is) the world...where the context suggests the earth as a place characterized by…weakness.” (Does the crucifixion of this Man suggest our weakness? Definitely.) If you know what Grok is, this is an alternative translation: τῆς γῆς (tēs gēs) = "of the earth" (from gē, meaning earth, land, ground, or the world/soil)

Remember, Jesus had dodged their capture time and time again, saying “my time has not yet come.” But in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus emphasized something else: Then he came to the disciples and said, “Sleep now and take your rest . . . The time has come! I am into the hands of evil men! (TLB)

This is saying, Jesus gave Himself over to Satan on Thursday at the Garden. He was in Satan’s wicked hands from Thursday until Sunday morning suffering and paying for our sin. (He suffered much before the Cross). Thus He was in the heart of the earth’s wickedness for 3 days…and nights, just as Jonah was under the sway of the big fish for 3 days. (P.S. This lengthy note is not from Prof. Larson, but from Amazingfacts.org).