The Death and Resurrection
of Jesus
By Michael
A. H. Back
The goal
of this essay is to construct a timeline of the events surrounding
the death and resurrection of Jesus, and from that information,
definitively figure out on which day of the week each event occurred,
culminating in the exact day of the week when Jesus died.
The first
thing that needs to be explained in order to understand the timing of
the events surrounding the death and resurrection of Jesus is the
differences in the way modern Western countries and the Jews chart a
day. In the west, we chart a twenty-four hour day from midnight to
midnight. We could illustrate the way we think of a day with the
following chart (think of it as tracking the movement of the sun:
i.e. the dark blue section is night, when the sun is below the
horizon, the yellow section is daylight, when it is above the
horizon, and the middle line is the horizon):
The Jews,
however, chart their days from sunset to sunset. Thus, according to
the Jewish reckoning, a twenty-four hour day would be charted as follows:
On the
Jewish calendar, Tuesday starts at sunset on Monday, and ends on
sunset Tuesday, when Wednesday starts. This is important if we are to
understand daily time phrases as they are used by Jews. In the west,
when we talk about Friday evening and Friday night, we are referring
to the period of darkness which FOLLOWS Friday morning and afternoon.
On the Jewish calendar, Friday evening and Friday night occur BEFORE
Friday morning and afternoon. Thus, if I use the Jewish calendar, and
I eat dinner late Wednesday evening, say at 8:30pm, then go to bed at
11pm Wednesday night, when I wake up for work in the morning, it is
Wednesday morning, NOT Thursday morning. So, to create a timeline of
days on the Jewish calendar, we can use a series of the above charts
as follows.
Using this
new chart, we will build a careful timeline of the events leading up
to the death and resurrection of Jesus.
It is
important to understand that this is not a theological examination of
the death and resurrection, it is an attempt to reconstruct a
timeline of the events surrounding the death and resurrection. By and
large, I do not explore WHY something is described in a certain
fashion, WHY certain details are given while others are excluded, or
the meaning of the events. I simply search the descriptions for clues
that will allow me to place that event on a timeline. This is a
reconstruction of the order of events, and the writings of the
gospels are the testimonies of the witnesses called to the stand.
No single
gospel contains all the information necessary to reconstruct a
timeline of all the events surrounding the death and resurrection of
Jesus. A specific event could be found in several gospels, but only
one of them might give the necessary bit of information we need to
fit the event onto a timeline (such as saying, "the next
day..." or "two days before the Passover"). Thus, I
jump from gospel to gospel and back again to fit the pieces of the
puzzle together.
It should
be noted that Matthew has a very complete record of the events,
however, his gospel is of almost no use in constructing a timeline,
as he virtually never tells us WHEN something happened. He runs the
events of several days, and even several weeks, together as though
they all happened on the same day ("Jesus did this, and then
said this, and then this happened, and then he did
this&ldots;etc."). It is not that his timeline of events is
wrong, it's that he is not interested in providing a timeline at all.
He simply lists the things that happens, one right after another,
with no delineation of times, days, or such. The events and their
meanings are important to him. The chronological timeline of when
they happened is not. This fits completely with the theological
thrust of his gospel, but that is a different study.
Mark, on
the other hand, gives a very careful description of the timeline
involved for many of the events, and is the best source for
constructing a timeline. You will notice that most of the references
below come from Mark. Luke occasionally chimes in with an important
bit of information about the timeline, and although John skips most
of the events leading up to the crucifixion, he does add some small,
but important details that help us understand several important
events surrounding the death and resurrection.
The
Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread
