When was Jesus Christ crucified?

Answer 1

A:The gospels agree that Jesus was crucified on the first Good Friday (eg Mark15:42, John 19:31), but there are differences between the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) and John's Gospel as to the time of day and even whether the crucifixion took place after the Passover feast or the day beforehand. Mark's Gospel says that the crucifixion took place after the celebration of the Passover and breaks down the last twenty four hours into eight intervals of just three hours each.

1. We start with the celebration of the Passover Feast, which becomes the Last Supper. It began "when it was evening" (Mark 14:17), or when the sun went down: approximately 6 pm. Mark knew that the duration of the Passover meal was three hours and that it concluded with the singing of a hymn, so the first thing Jesus did was to sing a hymn with his disciples. Then Mark says, "And when they had sung a hymn they went out to the Mount of Olives". It was about 9 p.m.
2. Mark then has Jesus and the disciples go to the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus went to pray. He suffered alone and in agony, asking God that, if possible, he take this cup (his destiny to be crucified) away from Jesus. Meanwhile his disciples, Peter, James and John, were not able to remain awake. "Could you not watch one hour?" Jesus asked. The process was repeated two more times. The disciples could not watch one, two or three hours. It was now midnight.
3. The betrayal of Jesus, the darkest deed in human history, came next, occurring at the stroke of midnight.
4. At 3:00 a.m., Jesus was led away for a trial before the high priest and other senior priests and elders. It was on the basis of his messianic claim that he was judged to be worthy of death.

   Peter's threefold denial of Jesus, once each hour until the cock crowed, marked the end of that phase of the night, the watch between 3 am and 6 am being known as cockcrow. It was 6 o'clock.

5. "As soon as it was morning", which would be 6 am, Jesus was led by the chief priests, scribes and elders to Pontius Pilate for judgement.
6. "It was the third hour when they crucified him," that is, 9 o'clock.
7. When "the sixth hour had come" (12 noon), darkness covered the whole earth, reflecting the betrayal at 12 midnight. After three hours of darkness, at 3 p.m., Jesus cried out and gave up the ghost. He has suffered alone and in agony, just as in the Garden of Gethsemene, and his last words reflect anguish at the failure of his prayer in the Garden, when he asked if it were possible that this fate be taken from him: "My God. My God. Why hast thou forsaken me?".
8. Joseph of Arimathea then asked Pilate for the body of Jesus, so that he could be buried before the Sabbath began. Jesus was buried in the final period from 3 to 6 pm, before the sun went down.

In this account, and in the synoptic gospels that generally followed Mark, Jesus was placed on the cross at 9 o'clockand died just twelve hours later, an unusually short time for this form of torture and execution. It was 21 hours since the Last Supper began, and there were three more hours to the end of Good Friday by the Jewish calendar.

The account in John's Gospel has very different timings. First of all, Christ's crucifixion takes place on the day before the Passover celebration. There is no trial before the Sanhedrin, with Jesus simply taken separately to the homes of Annas and then Caiaphas. The trial before Pontius Pilate takes place later in the day, and Jesus is sent for crucifixion at the sixth hour, or 12 noon. In this account, he died after less than three hours and did not need the soldiers to break his legs to hasten death before the start of the Sabbath.

Another Answer:

A close read of the Gospel accounts of the events of the Crucifixion without preconceived ideas of when it was, will reveal to the reader that the timeline is not what mainstream Christianity teaches today.

The reader/questioner must understand the Feast of Passover and knowing that a day begins and ends at sunset (like the Genesis 1 account describes). This day is immediately followed by one of the seven High Holy Days of God and is an Annual Sabbath to be observed - usually different (as in this case) from the weekly Sabbath of the 7th day which is sunset Friday to sunset Saturday. This is the Feast of Unleavened Bread that lasts for seven days and the first Sunday after the High Sabbath has a special event done by the Levitical High Priest called the 'Wave Sheath' Offering which Christ now our Eternal High Priest did on the Sunday following the Sabbath resurrection - that is why he told the woman not to touch Him as He had yet to ascend to the Father as mankind's wave sheath offering for all sin. Knowing these traditions of 1st Century Jewish life, the reader will come to understand what day the crucifixion and resurrection were.

The only way to come up with 3 days that mainstream Christianity teaches is to disregard the 24 hours of each day and simply put an 'X' in each day of the calendar - Friday, Saturday, Sunday - to come to the only sign Jesus Himself, gave of His Messiahship. But no matter how you add up the hours of the details they teach, you never come to 72 hours as The Bible teaches.

Therefore, based upon the fact that Jesus' ministry was 4 Passovers long, and He remained in the tomb a full 72 hours, some biblical scholars have stated that the Crucifixion occurred on Wednesday, 25 April 31 AD. The three nights were Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday while the three full days were Thursday, Friday, Saturday - just before sunset of the 1st day of the week - Sunday when He was seen in the dark hours of early morning.

As the Jewish state was then under Roman control and John used the Roman reckoning of time, which began at midnight. The "sixth hour" in John's reckoning was 6:00 in the morning. However, the Jewish method of timekeeping started from that time (6:00 AM) of the morning, counting it as the first hour of the day. So the sixth hour of the day according to Jewish reckoning was noon.

The crucifixion occurred between the sixth and ninth hours of the day-Jewish time. Therefore, the four Gospel accounts do not contradict but instead they complement each other.

Another AnswerChrist was crucified on the Passover of Wednesday, April 6, 32 A.D. [Sir Robert Anderson; other chronologies assume a Friday crucifixion.]