Timeline question.

[Jedidiah]

Luke also seems to imply two Sabbaths from the time Jesus was buried to the time he was raised.

Amen.

[Faber]

A second is actually defined as "...duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom" (http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/second.html). Read that definition again and let it sink in. Let's all (not necessarily you TheWall, I'm just talking generally) cut the ancients a bit of slack--they didn't have our, justifiably sensible and oftentimes very necessary, obsession with precision.

They didn't have Cesium 133 either.

[Cow Poke]

They didn't have Cesium 133 either.

Or Timex! It takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin'!

[Christianbookworm]

Or Timex! It takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin'!

Or an atomic clock. Or the internet. Or electricity. Or the printing press. They didn't have a lot of stuff.

[Faber]

But they had those Parthian batteries.

[rogue06]

Or Timex! It takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin'!

So they claim

[Amazing Rando]

How do you see it as the "Catholic" timeline? It seems to me that scholars who are not Catholic see the three days as the ancient Jews saw them.

And if Jesus died on the Wednesday or Thursday then the timing would not have been correct for the Passover that year.

He HAD to be on the cross before sundown on the Friday, before the Sabbath started. He had to die at the time of the evening sacrifices of lambs of atonement in order to fulfill God's timeline for His perfect Sacrifice.

I don't see any way that scripture puts the actual crucifixion on any other day than the Friday.

Right- Mark 15:42 explicitly identifies the day of crucifixion as "The Day of Preparation" which was the day before the Sabbath, which started sundown Friday evening. So he died on a Friday before sundown.

[Cow Poke]

Right- Mark 15:42 explicitly identifies the day of crucifixion as "The Day of Preparation" which was the day before the Sabbath, which started sundown Friday evening. So he died on a Friday before sundown.

And that "part of a day" counted as "a day".

[Obsidian]

Right- Mark 15:42 explicitly identifies the day of crucifixion as "The Day of Preparation" which was the day before the Sabbath, which started sundown Friday evening. So he died on a Friday before sundown.

There were other sabbaths besides Saturday.

[seanD]

Right- Mark 15:42 explicitly identifies the day of crucifixion as "The Day of Preparation" which was the day before the Sabbath, which started sundown Friday evening. So he died on a Friday before sundown.

Nope. John called it the "high Sabbath" which was the Sabbath that fell at the end of the Feast of Unleavened Bread (the seventh day). This solves the seeming contradiction between Mark 16:1 -- who indicates the women bought the burial items after the Sabbath, and Luke 23:56 -- who indicates they did this before the Sabbath. They were both right. Mark was speaking of the "high Sabbath," and Luke was speaking of the weekly Sabbath.

Sorry, but the Friday tradition is bunk. I know it's difficult to give up tradition, but it is what it is.

[seanD]

Nope. John called it the "high Sabbath" which was the Sabbath that fell at the end of the Feast of Unleavened Bread (the seventh day). This solves the seeming contradiction between Mark 16:1 -- who indicates the women bought the burial items after the Sabbath, and Luke 23:56 -- who indicates they did this before the Sabbath. They were both right. Mark was speaking of the "high Sabbath," and Luke was speaking of the weekly Sabbath.

Sorry, but the Friday tradition is bunk. I know it's difficult to give up tradition, but it is what it is.

I actually made a mistake here. The high Sabbath referred to by John was actually the beginning of the Feast of Unleavened Bread not the end, which was a 7 day feast sandwiched by two Sabbaths, and occurred after Passover. So, Jesus and his disciples ate the Passover meal, most likely at Tues twilight (which kicked off the Passover day), was tried and crucified during the Passover day. Then was taken off the cross at (or just before) sundown which kicked off the high Sabbath/Unleavened Bread Feast. The women wait for this Sabbath to pass (Mark 16:1), then buy and prepare the spices, then have to wait again for weekly Sabbath to pass (Luke 23:56).

[Faber]

I actually made a mistake here. The high Sabbath referred to by John was actually the beginning of the Feast of Unleavened Bread not the end, which was a 7 day feast sandwiched by two Sabbaths, and occurred after Passover. So, Jesus and his disciples ate the Passover meal, most likely at Tues twilight (which kicked off the Passover day), was tried and crucified during the Passover day. Then was taken off the cross at (or just before) sundown which kicked off the high Sabbath/Unleavened Bread Feast. The women wait for this Sabbath to pass (Mark 16:1), then buy and prepare the spices, then have to wait again for weekly Sabbath to pass (Luke 23:56).

The crescent moon was only 22 hours past conjunction with the sun at sunset on Thursday, March 23, AD 30 (proleptic Julian calendar). This would be barely visible with the naked eye, even by a trained observer. According to an abstract by Mohammad Ilyas entitled “The Danjon Limit of Lunar Visibility: A Re-examination (Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, 1983. Vol. 77, p. 21), a minimum elongation of ~10.5º from the sun is necessary, or a minimum of 20.6 hours. Even weather permitting, it would be highly improbably that two witnesses would have been able to observe the crescent and report it to the sanhedrin, as was required to corfirm the beginning of the month Nisan. Therefore 1 Nisan probably took place at sunset, Friday, March 24. The Passover sacrifices would have taken place on Friday, and the meal after sunset Friday night, the beginning of the Sabbath. The Passover sabbath would have coincided with the weekly sabbath that year.

But consider what appears to be a major contradiction in the Gospels. According to Matthew, Mark and Luke, Jesus and the disciples already ate the Passover meal. Then came the trial, and Jesus was taken to Pontius Pilate, then to Herod, then back to Pilate. And the high priest and the Sanhedrin refused to enter the Praetorium because they would become defiled and unable to partake of the Passover meal. (John 18:28)

The Pulpit Commentary (Vol. 17 on John 18:28) states,

The day is breaking, which constitutes, according to John (prima facie), the 14th of Nisan, in the evening of which and commencement of the 15th the Passover would be killed. According to the synoptists, that Passover meal was already over, and the first great day of the feast had commenced - the day of convocation, with sabbatic functions and duties. The statements are apparently in hopeless variance.

William Barclay's Daily Study Bible Series (John, Vol. 2, p. 293) laments,

There is here a contradiction for which there is no compromise solution. Either the Synoptic gospels are correct or John is. Scholars are much divided. But it seems most likely that the Synoptics are correct. . . There is no full explanation of this obvious discrepancy; but this seems to us the best.

Henry Alford's commentary on The Greek Testament (Vol. 1, p. 262) comments,

[I]t must not be forgotten that over all three narratives extends the great difficulty of explaining “the first day of the feast of unleavened bread” (Matt., Mark) or “the day of unleavened bread” (Luke), and of reconciling the impression undeniably conveyed by them, that the Lord and his disciples ate the usual Passover, with the narrative of St. John, which not only does not sanction, but I believe absolutely excludes such a supposition.

But according to the Didascalia Apostolorum, ch. XXI, they had eaten the Passover on Tuesday night. Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis, author of the Panarion (Medicine Chest) Section IV, series 51,26,3, confirms.

Bible scholar Annie Jaubert (The Date of the Last Supper. Translated by Isaac Rafferty; Staten Island, NY: Alba House, 1965, p. 52) mentions that there was another calendar in effect in Judea, especially among the Essenes (Fragments 4Q321, 4Q326). It was a perennial calendar of 52 weeks, 364 days. 14 Nisan fell on a Tuesday every year, and the Passover feast took place on Tuesday night every year.

Apparently many people were either following that calendar, or trying to beat the crowds by celebrating a few days early. There's no way the priests could have slaughtered 255,600 lambs (Josephus, War, Book 6 (Niese, 6:422-26; Whiston, vi.9.3)) within the three hours allotted for Passover sacrifices. And the Babylonian Talmud (Pesachim 59b, 60b, 61a, 64a-b; Zevachim 2a, 11b) has much to say about people sacrificing peace offerings on the wrong days and using them for Passover meals.

[seanD]

Faber, I'm not sure what you're arguing here. The bottom of your post confirms the idea the Passover was Tues twilight. Thus Jesus' trial, crucifixion and burial occurred through the rest of Wed, the Passover day. Passover lasted throughout the whole day, from Tues sundown to Wed sundown. People undoubtedly ate the meal at different times of the day, much like Americans today eat Thanksgiving dinner at different parts of the day.

In the top of your post you seem to be arguing in favor of a Friday Passover but use massive amounts of speculation to support that

[Faber]

The official Passover as recognized by the rabbis and priests was Friday, 14 Nisan, with the feast taking place after sunset, which would be the Sabbath, 15 Nisan. If, as I suspect, Jesus and His disciples held their private seder on Tuesday night, and was arrested that night, this would leave time for all the events which took place from His arrest to the crucifixion.

According to the Talmud, trials requiring capital punishment were to take two days. The sanhedrin were not permitted to pass judgment on the same day as the trial, some sort of cooling-off period. And it would take a whole day anyway to interrogate each and every witness separately in order to find two which would agree on the exact day, time, place and description of Jesus's offense, subsequent to their clearly having warned Jesus against making the offense. They found none until He blatantly, in their mind, committed the sacrilege of blasphemy before the entire sanhedrin. Then after having passed the final judgment the next day, they had to take Him to Pilate, who then took Him to Herod, then back to Pilate. And it's possible that the Praetorium was in the Fortress Antonia at the northeast end of the city and Herod's palace was at the southwest end of the city. And according to tradition this all took place within a matter of a few hours? Unlikely.

A Tuesday night Last Supper allows time for all these events to have taken place.

[seanD]

They didn't need that amount of time. They didn't need witnesses because, according to them, they heard the blasphemy straight from his own lips (Mark 14:60-65).