Was Christ crucified at night

Answer 1

A:No. In fact, Mark's gospel is quite clear about exactly when each event occurred in the last 24 hours in the life of Jesus, breaking them up into eight segments each of exactly three hours:

• The story begins "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 at the end of his segment he says, "And when they had sung a hymn they went out to the Mount of Olives". It was about 9 pm.
• Mark then has Jesus and the disciples go to the Garden of Gethsemane, where 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.
• The act of betrayal, the darkest deed in human history, came next, occurring at the stroke of midnight.
• At 3:00 am., Jesus was led away for a trial before the high priest and other senior priests and elders. This governing body then judged him, on the basis of his messianic claim, to be worthy of death.
• The watch of the night between 3 am and 6 am was called cockcrow. Peter's threefold denial of Jesus, once each hour until the cock crowed, marked the end of that phase of the night. That makes it 6 am.
• "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.
• "It was the third hour when they crucified him," that is, 9 o'clock.
• 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.
• Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus, so that he could be buried before night, when the Sabbath began. Jesus was buried in the final period from 3 to 6 pm, before the sun went down.

The other synoptic gospels follow this pattern more or less faithfully, although John places the crucifixion some hours later.