Every year around Easter I hear people discussing the day that Jesus was crucified. Many Christians simply accept traditional Good Friday without much reflection on questions of chronology. Others protest that Jesus couldn’t possibly have been crucified on a Friday and instead suggest a Wednesday or Thursday crucifixion, depending on their interpretation of the biblical data. In this post I want to explain why I am convinced that Jesus was crucified on the Friday of Passion Week.

This post is not an exhaustive defense of Good Friday, nor it is it a complete refutation of alternate crucifixion chronologies. Perhaps I will provide a more rigorous argument for Good Friday another time. Here, though, I want to look at a few passages which push me away from a Wednesday or Thursday crucifixion and toward a Friday crucifixion. At the very least, I want to show that believing Jesus was crucified on Friday is not entirely unthinkable, as some may claim.

Brief Prologue: Why the Disagreement?

Jesus describes the timing of his death and resurrection in several different ways. He said that he will rise again “after three days” (Mk 8:31). He said that he would raise up the temple of his body “in three days” (John 2:19). On multiple occasions he said that he would rise again “the third day” or “on the third day” (Mt 16:21, 17:23, 20:19, Mk 9:31, 10:34, Lk 9:22, 18:33, 24:7).

But in Matthew 12:40 Jesus says, “For just 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” (ESV). Because this verse says three days and three nights—as opposed to merely three days—many Christians believe that Jesus is specifying that he will be in the tomb for three full days (i.e., approx. 72 hours). Since it is impossible to fit three days and three nights between Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday, so the argument goes, Jesus could not have been crucified on Friday. Depending on one’s method of counting, then, Jesus must have been crucified on Wednesday or Thursday instead.

I will return to Matthew 12:40 later on; in what follows I will explain why Jesus could not have been crucified on Wednesday or Thursday.

Why not Wednesday?

Most people who reject a Friday crucifixion suggest Wednesday instead; but Luke 24 makes a Wednesday crucifixion impossible.

Luke 24:1-12 records that a group of women went to the tomb early in the morning. These women found the stone rolled away and the body gone; an angel told them that Jesus had risen from the dead. The women left and told their experience to the disciples, and Peter went to the tomb to see for himself. All of this happened “on the first day of the week” (τῇ δὲ μιᾷ τῶν σαββάτων, v. 1)—i.e., Sunday. Later “on that same day” (ἐν αὐτῇ τῇ ἡμέρᾳ, v. 13) Jesus appeared to two disciples on the road to Emmaus, but they did not recognize him. Jesus asked them what they were talking about, and why they were so sad (v. 17). Cleopas briefly recounted Jesus’s ministry and crucifixion. Then, in Lk 24:21 Cleopas says, “Indeed, besides all this, today is the third day since these things happened” (NKJV). According to Cleopas, Sunday was the third day after Jesus’s crucifixion. Cleopas’s statement can be understood two ways, depending on whether one counts backward inclusively or exclusively.

Counting inclusively, Sunday is included in the count as day three: Sunday “is the third day” since the crucifixion. If this is the case, then Saturday is the second day and Friday is the first day.

Counting exclusively, Sunday is not included in the count: Sunday “is the third day since” the crucifixion—i.e., the fourth day. If this is the case then Saturday is day three, Friday is day two, and Thursday is day one.

No matter how we count these three days, though, we cannot get back to Wednesday. If Jesus had been crucified on Wednesday, and his conversation with Cleopas took place Sunday, this would be four days later (counting inclusively) or five days later (counting exclusively). Luke 24 makes a Wednesday crucifixion impossible.

Why not Thursday?

Thursday is a less popular alternative to Good Friday; and as we have seen, it is possible depending on how one counts “three days.” Nevertheless, two details in the gospels also make a Thursday crucifixion impossible.

The first detail is that the Last Supper was in fact a Passover meal. Christians who reject Good Friday often maintain that the Last Supper was a pre-Passover meal and not the Passover itself. But all four gospels say that Jesus ate Passover with his disciples.

• Mt 26:17-20—Now on the first day of Unleavened Bread the disciples came to Jesus saying, “Where will you have us prepare for you to eat the Passover?” He said, “Go into the city to a certain man and say to him, ‘The Teacher says, My time is at hand. I will keep the Passover at your house with my disciples.’” And the disciples did as Jesus had directed them, and they prepared the Passover. When it was evening, he reclined at table with the twelve.
• Mk 14:12-17—And on the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they sacrificed the Passover lamb, his disciples said to him, “Where will you have us go and prepare for you to eat the Passover?” And he sent two of his disciples and said to them, “Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him, and wherever he enters, say to the master of the house, ‘The Teacher says, Where is my guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ And he will show you a large upper room furnished and ready; there prepare for us.” And the disciples set out and went to the city and found it just as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover. And when it was evening, he came with the twelve.
• Lk 22:8-15—So Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, “Go and prepare the Passover for us, that we may eat it.” They said to him, “Where will you have us prepare it?” He said to them, “Behold, when you have entered the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him into the house that the enters and tell the master of the house, ‘The Teacher says to you, Where is the guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ And he will show you a large upper room furnished; prepare it there.” And they went and found it just as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover. And when the hour came, he reclined at table, and the apostles with him. And he said to them, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.”
• Jn 13:1-4—Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. During supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray him, Jesus…rose from supper.

A few comments about these passages.

Firstly, if Jesus did not eat the Passover with his disciples, then he lied to them and to the man whose house they used for the Last Supper. Jesus explicitly says that he will “keep” (Mt 26:18) and “eat” (Mk 14:14, Lk 22:11) the Passover. When Jesus sends Peter and John to “prepare the Passover,” he tells them his purpose: “in order for us to eat it” (ἑτοιμάσατε ἡμῖν τὸ πάσχα ἵνα φάγωμεν, Lk 22:8). At evening Jesus sits down at the meal that Peter and John have prepared and calls it Passover: “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover (τοῦτο τὸ πάσχα φαγεῖν) with you before I suffer” (Lk 22:15). Note that the meal takes place in the evening (Mt 26:20, Mk 14:17, Jn 13:30), when God required Passover to be eaten (Lev 23:5, Num 9:5, Deut 16:6). The Last Supper was definitely a Passover meal.

Secondly, at first glance the wording in John might seem to imply that the Last Supper took place before Passover. But this is a misunderstanding; John’s statement cannot contradict what Matthew, Mark, and Luke plainly say. John does not say that the supper took place before the feast of Passover; instead, John says that Jesus knew before Passover that his hour to die had come. When verse 2 mentions “supper,” it is the Passover supper that has already been introduced in verse 1. There is no contradiction here: all four gospels say that Jesus ate the Passover.

Thirdly, Jesus could not have celebrated the Passover meal early, before the actual Passover. The OT is very clear that Passover must be celebrated in the evening on the 14^th day of the first month, the month of Abib (Ex 12:6-22, Num 9:1-5, Deut 16:1-8). If someone was ritually impure during Passover, God allowed them to keep the Passover on the 14^th day of the second month (Num 9:6-14). But the Law makes no provision for celebrating the Passover early.

As noted above, there are two details which make a Thursday crucifixion impossible. The first, as I have shown, is that Jesus celebrated and ate Passover with his disciples. The second is that Jesus was crucified on “preparation day.”

What is the “Day of Preparation”?

All four gospels record that Jesus was crucified on the Day of Preparation

• Mt 27:59-64—And Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen shroud and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had cut in the rock. And he rolled a great stone to the entrance of the tomb and went away…. The next day, that is, after the day of Preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate and said, “Sir, we remember how that impostor said, while he was still alive, ‘After three days I will rise.’ Therefore order the tomb to be made secure until the third day.”
• Mk 15:42-43—And when evening had come, since it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council, who was also himself looking for the kingdom of God, took courage and went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.
• Lk 23:50-54—And a man named Joseph, who was a member of the Council, a good and righteous man…went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. And he took it down and wrapped it in a linen cloth, and laid him in a tomb cut into the rock, where no one had ever lain. It was the preparation day, and the Sabbath was about to begin. (NASB 95)
• Jn 19:13-14—[Pilate] brought Jesus out and sat down on the judgment seat at a place called The Stone Pavement, and in Aramaic Gabbatha. Now it was the day of Preparation of the Passover. It was about the sixth hour. He said to the Jews, “Behold your King!”
• Jn 19:31—Since it was the day of Preparation, and so that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken and that they might be taken away.
• Jn 19:41-42—Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid. So because of the Jewish day of Preparation, since the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there.

At first glance, John 19:14 seems to support option 1: “the Day of Preparation of the Passover” sounds a lot like “the day to prepare for the Passover.” But, as we discussed above, Jesus had already kept the Passover with his disciples the night before. The Day of Preparation in these verses can’t be the day to prepare for Passover, because Passover has already taken place. Peter and John “prepared the Passover” the day before Jesus was crucified (Mt 26:17, 27:1, Mk 14:12, 15:1). Therefore the day on which Jesus was crucified cannot be the day to prepare for Passover; that was yesterday.

This means that Preparation Day in these verses must be option 2, the day to prepare for the weekly Sabbath—i.e., Friday. Indeed, the Greek word for “preparation” in the NT, παρασκευή, was the common word for “Friday” for ancient Greek-speaking Jews and Christians.¹ Mark 15:42 says explicitly that the Day of Preparation was “the day before the Sabbath.” The Greek word used here, προσάββατον, also refers to Friday—the day before the weekly Sabbath (cf. Judith 8:6).² All four gospels say directly that Jesus was crucified on Friday, and Mark even uses two different words for Friday to make sure that there was no confusion. Since Passover has already happened, this Preparation Day is cannot be the day to prepare for Passover; it is the weekly Preparation Day (Friday) to prepare for the weekly Sabbath (Saturday).

What about “Three Days and Three Nights”?

So, since all four gospels say that Jesus was crucified on Friday and had risen by early Sunday morning, what are we to make of Jesus’s statement in Matthew 12:40, “For just 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”? Everyone knows that it is impossible to fit three days and three nights between Friday afternoon and morning Sunday. How are we to resolve this apparent discrepancy? A few things about this.

Firstly, we should notice that there are nearly two dozen verses which say that Jesus would rise “in three days,” “after three days,” or “on the third day;” but Mt 12:40 is the only place which says “three days and three nights.” Of course all scripture must harmonize, and so we cannot simply discard Mt 12:40 as unimportant because it is the “odd man out.” But sound principles of Biblical exegesis require us to interpret the lone verse in light of the many, not the other way around. Those who insist on 72 hours between Jesus’s burial and Jesus’s resurrection are placing too much interpretive weight on a single sentence.

Secondly, this statement occurs within a typological comparison between Jesus and Jonah: just as Jonah descended into hell but was redeemed from corruption (Jonah 2:2, 6), so Christ descended into hell but did not see corruption (Acts 2:31). Jonah was in the whale’s belly for three days, and Jesus was in the grave for three days. The main point of this passage actually seems to be the contrast between the people of Nineveh, who repented at Jonah’s preaching, and the people of Israel, who would continue to reject Jesus even after his resurrection (Mt 12:41). When we add to this that Jesus regularly spoke in parables, why would we assume that Jesus is being strictly literal with his reckoning of time here? Jesus’s point in this passage, it seems, is not to give us a precise timing of his resurrection but rather to compare himself to Jonah while contrasting Nineveh’s belief with Israel’s rejection. It is therefore possible, if not likely, that “three days and three nights” is metaphorical or symbolic rather than literal.

Thirdly, if we understand “three days and three nights” in a rigidly literal manner, Mt 12:40 contradicts what the Bible plainly says elsewhere. But this cannot be the case. The Bible does not contradict itself, Jesus did not lie about the timing of his resurrection, and his disciples were not confused about the events that they witnessed with their own eyes. As I have shown above, all four gospels say that Jesus ate Passover with his disciples, that he was crucified on Preparation Day / Friday, and that he had already risen before the women came to the tomb early on Sunday. And yet it is impossible to fit 72 hours between Friday afternoon and Sunday early morning. If Mt 12:40 really does mean three full days and three full nights, then this stand-alone verse contradicts the unanimous testimony of the gospels.

There is a simple resolution to this apparent contradiction. In ancient Jewish culture, time was not always reckoned with the obsessive precision that it is in modern Western culture. The Talmud repeatedly shows that ancient Jews often reckoned a portion of a day or a portion of a night as the whole of that day.

The Jerusalem Talmud y.Shabbat 9:3 records a statement by the Eleazar ben Azariah, a well respected teacher from the 1^st-2^nd century AD: “Rabbi Eleazar ben Azariah says, ‘A day and a night are a term, and part of a term is like the whole.'”³ Eleazar makes this statement in the context of ritual impurity caused by intercourse. He explains how a woman can be considered ritually pure “on the third day” even though only slightly more than one full day has elapsed: “Sometimes after slightly more than a day she is pure…How does it happen that after slightly more than a day she is pure? She had intercourse Friday afternoon before sundown and lost Saturday night after nightfall; there is slightly more than a day she is pure.”

In the scenario that Eleazar imagines here, a woman has intercourse late on Friday; she is considered ritually impure all day Saturday until the evening (cf. Lev 15:16-18); and then is ritually pure early Sunday, when the new day has started. The situation that Eleazar describes here is directly parallel to what we see in the gospels. Jesus was crucified Friday afternoon before sunset and is quickly buried because Sabbath nightfall is approaching; he is in the grave all day Saturday; and he rises again early Sunday. Because “part of a term is like the whole” any portion of a day or a night counts as a full day (i.e., evening and morning), part of Friday, all of Saturday, and part of Sunday count as “three days and three nights.”

This method of counting might might feel strange, at first, to our chronologically precise modern culture; but we have a similar phenomenon. When we say “three calendar days,” we know that this may refer to portions of days and not strictly to three full days. Let’s say a traveler gets on a plane and flies to St. Louis on a business trip. This man arrives at 9pm on Friday, and goes to his hotel to sleep. Saturday he gets up and conducts his business, and then returns to his hotel. Very early Sunday, say 3am, the businessman wakes up, goes to the airport and flies home. Everyone will admit that he was in St. Louis for three days—even though he was only in St. Louis for 30 hours instead of 72.

As odd as it may sound, “three days and three nights” is an idiomatic way to say “three calendar days” in ancient Jewish culture. Rabbi Eleazar’s comments demonstrate that a person within ancient culture could easily have understood Jesus’s phrase to mean “slightly more than a day.” When we force “three days and three nights” to refer rigidly to 72 hours, we are misreading Jesus’s words through modern Western eyes.

Conclusion

On Thursday of Passion week, the disciples came to Jesus and asked where they should prepare the Passover meal (Mt 26:17), so Jesus he sent Peter and John to get everything ready (Lk 22:8). That evening Jesus came to the appointed place with the rest of the twelve (Mk 14:17) and ate the Passover meal with them (Lk 22:15). That night he was arrested and tried by a kangaroo court.

Early Friday morning he was taken to Pilate’s house (Mt 27:1-2), condemned to death, and crucified at approximately nine in the morning (Mk 15:25). He hung there in agony, the innocent purchasing pardon for the guilty, suffering for the sins of his people. From about noon until 3PM the whole land was darkened, groaning under the weight of her dying Creator; he cried with a loud voice and gave up the ghost (Lk 23:44-46).

Because it was Friday, so that his body would not stay on the cross on the Sabbath, Joseph requested Jesus’s body for burial (Mk 15:42-45). On the one hand, God’s law stipulated that bodies were not allowed to hang on a tree overnight (Deut 21:22-23). On the other hand, this Sabbath fell during the week of Passover / Unleavened Bread, so it was especially holy (Jn 19:31). It was almost night, and Sabbath was about to begin, so Joseph and Nicodemus rushed Jesus’s body to the tomb because it was close by (Lk 23:53-56, Jn 19:38-42). Some women who were close to Jesus followed them, saw where the tomb was, and then went home to prepare spices and ointments for the body.

Then came Sabbath. The women rested (Lk 23:56). All Judea rested. Jesus rested in the grave, having accomplished his sacrifice for us. The Lord of the Sabbath kept the Sabbath one last time.

But early on the first day of the week, at dawn that Sunday, the women returned to the tomb with their ointments and found that the Lord was not there (Lk 24:1-9)! Jesus had risen from the grave on the third day, just as he had promised! The God of the living had defeated death with death; he had risen to die no more, and to give eternal life to his people. “I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death” (Rev 1:18).

The day of Jesus’s crucifixion is important, because everything in the scriptures is important. But the “weightier matter” is that Jesus died, not when Jesus died. I am convinced that Jesus was crucified on Friday; this is what the scriptures teach. But even if I am wrong about when Jesus died, he did die, and his death has brought us everlasting life! Have a blessed Good Friday and a Happy Easter!

1. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 16.163; Martyrdom of Polycarp 7.1; Didache 8:1.
   BDAG, s.v. παρασκευή “according to Israel’s usage [παρασκευή] was Friday, on which day everything had to be prepared for the Sabbath, when no work was permitted…. For Christians as well παρασκευή served to designate the sixth day of the week Friday.” ↩︎
2. BDAG, s.v. προσάββατον. ↩︎
3. Similar language is also found in b.Niddah 33a and b.Nazir 5b-6a. Indeed, Jesus himself seems to use this method of counting in Luke 13:32: “today, tomorrow, and the third day” are three days even though they are not three full days / 72 hours. ↩︎