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Moadim • Yeshua's Birthday • Annotated Calendar • Crucifixion Week Chronology • Tisha B’Av & 17 Tammuz • Christ Mass • Candy Cane

In the “things that make the rabbi go ‘Hmmm’” department …

In response to a request from the Scribes and Pharisees for a sign to prove His Messiahship, Yeshua told them, “An evil and adulterous generation craves for a sign; and yet no sign will be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet; for just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matthew 12:39-41). Christian tradition proposes a “triumphant entry” by Messiah into Jerusalem on “Palm Sunday,” His crucifixion on “Good Friday,” and a resurrection early on “Easter” Sunday morning.

Problems with the Traditional Christian Chronology

For something like 1,500 years or more, the Church has taught us that Messiah’s “Triumphal Entry” into Jerusalem was on “Palm Sunday,” that He celebrated His “Last Supper” with His disciples on Thursday evening the day before the Jewish Passover, that He was crucified a bit before noon on “Good Friday,” died sometime around 3:00 PM, and was resurrected just before sunrise (approximately 6:00 AM) on “Easter Sunday” morning.

This traditional chronology creates two very significant problems that Christian theologians and Bible teachers conveniently ignore:

 1. The Sign of Jonah is not fulfilled:

• Yeshua told the Scribes and Pharisees that the proof of His Messiahship would be His fulfillment of “the Sign of Jonah.” The traditional chronology makes Him a wrong (if so, then He was a false prophet [Deuteronomy 18:22]).

 2. There is an inconsistency in the Gospels as to the date of the Crucifixion:

• Matthew writes that the “Last Supper” was actually the Passover Seder that the Disciples and their Rabbi celebrated on the first day of Unleavened Bread (Matthew 26:17-20).

• Agreeing with Matthew, Mark and Luke both write that the Disciples were preparing their Passover Seder “on the first day of Unleavened Bread, when the Passover lamb was being sacrificed” (Mark 14:12-16, Luke 22:7-15).

• However, John says that when Yeshua was crucified on the day after their final Passover, it was “the day of Preparation for Passover” (John 19:14). Which part of the Scriptures are in error, John or the synoptic Gospels? Remember that one single error in the Scriptures nullifies the validity of the entire Bible!

Yeshua said that He would fulfill the “sign of Jonah” by being in the grave for “three days and three nights.” On every clock that I have ever been able to find, “three days and three nights” is a period of 72 hours, and there simply are not 72 hours between 3:00 PM on Friday and 6:00 AM on Sunday.

No matter what kind of “fuzzy math” you perform, the period of time between a Friday afternoon crucifixion and a Sunday morning resurrection cannot possible be more than 36 hours, exactly half the amount of time required to fulfill “the sign of Jonah.” If Yeshua did not literally and completely fulfill “the sign of Jonah” with a full three days and three nights in the tomb, then he lied about it, and is thus not qualified to be the Messiah. Since He claimed to be the Messiah, then if He is not all He claimed to be, He was a false prophet. One would think that “the Church” might consider this to be a significant problem.

This traditional chronology relies totally on Roman Catholic tradition and conveniently chooses to ignore both Jewish history and the Biblical record. It is this writer’s opinion (and only an opinion) that this erroneous chronology is the direct result of Constantine’s outlawing of all Jewish practices, especially the Passover observance, in the new “Church” that he created sometime between 311 and 325 CE. [More about this here.]

The Source of the Traditional Chronology

The tradition that sets “Good Friday” as the day of crucifixion is based on ignorance of Hebrew tradition. It assumes that the Shabbat (Sabbath) referred to in Mark 15:42 was the Seventh-day Shabbat (Saturday). The translators and interpreters did not understand that every Jewish Holy Day is a Shabbat, and the Shabbat referred to in verse 42 was not Saturday, but the first day of Unleavened Bread, the 15th of Nisan. Passover proper occurs just after sunset but before total darkness on the 14th of Nisan according to Leviticus 23:5-6.

“In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, between sundown and complete darkness, comes Pesach [Passover] for ADONAI. On the fifteenth day of the same month is the festival of matzah (Unleavened Bread); for seven days you are to eat matzah.” [CJB]

The Church historically justifies this discrepancy by (incorrectly) proposing that “on the Jewish calendar, any portion of a day is counted as a full day and any portion of a night is considered a full night.” Even if this were true (and it is not), between 3:00 PM on Friday and 6:00 AM on Sunday there  are 39 (not 72) hours, and only two nights: Friday night and Saturday night. No matter how you trim and whittle, it is mathematically impossible to cram three days and three nights, or even any portions of three days and three nights, into 39 hours.

So how can we resolve this problem? (I encourage you to be good Bereans, and click on the links for Scripture references or look them up in your Bible and see what the Word actually says. What I say or think is unimportant; be concerned only with what Ruach HaKodesh [the Holy spirit] says through the Shliachim [Apostles].)

Three Things We Can Know With Absolute Certainly

 1. Yeshua was totally and absolutely Torah-observant. He simply would not — could not — violate the Passover. To do so would make him “a sinner” and an unsuitable sacrifice for our redemption.

 2. If Yeshua lied (or was wrong) about how long He would be buried, then he was a false prophet, and not the Messiah. So if He said that He would prove that He is the Messiah by fulfilling “the Sign of Jonah” by being in the earth for three days and three nights, then he was in the tomb literally for 72 hours.

 3. The Scriptures are always correct! When Scripture disagrees with Scripture, or when the Scriptures are “wrong,” it is we who have arrived at the wrong interpretation.

With those three working pre-suppositions, we have a very interesting challenge in unraveling the chronology of the crucifixion week.

The Facts As We Know Them

 1. Passover was given to Israel as a foreshadow of Messiah’s atoning sacrifice.

 2. Passover is on 14th day of Nisan (formerly called Abib), and the lamb is to be slain “at twilight” (literally, “between the evenings” or “between sundown and complete darkness” as the Complete Jewish Version translates it). (Exod. 12:6; Lev. 23:5)

 3. The Passover Lamb is to be brought into the house for extensive examination on the 10th day of Nisan. (Exod. 12:3)

 4. To fulfill the prophetic picture of Passover, Messiah had to enter Jerusalem and the Temple (be taken into the “House” — a Hebrew appellation for the Temple, from “My house shall be called a house of prayer”) on Nisan (Abib) 10 (on no other day), and be killed “between the evenings” on Nisan (Abib) 14 (on no other day).

 5. The “sign of Jonah” was to be literally fulfilled: As Jonah was “in the belly of the fish” for three days and three nights (72 hours, Jonah 1:17), so Messiah was to be “in the heart of the earth” for three days and three nights (72 hours, Matthew 12:39-41). [Sorry, but that “any part of a day counts as a whole day” theory just won’t fly. “Three days and three nights” is English for a Hebrew phrase which means … “three days and three nights.”]

 6. First Fruits was literally fulfilled by the Resurrection (1Cor. 15:20,23), and therefore had to occur on the Day of First Fruits. But the current Jewish Yom HaBikkurim (the Day of First Fruits) is the first day of Shavuot (Exod. 34:22), also called Pentecost, seven weeks after Passover. However, there are two “First Fruits,” the barley first fruits and the wheat first fruits. Barley, the Spring “First Fruits” is the first of the winter planting to be harvested in Spring (Lev. 23:9-10); wheat isn’t harvested until the Summer “First Fruits” almost two months later (Exod. 34:22). [Modern Judaism only recognizes the second “First Fruits,” and my personal belief is that they do so because to acknowledge the early “First Fruits” they would have to deal with Yeshua’ fulfillment of that foreshadowing. Ignoring the early “First Fruits” eliminates that problem for them.]

 7. On the Hebrew calendar, the day begins and ends at sunset, not at midnight [“God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.” (Genesis 1:5, NASB)]. On Nisan 13 and 14 (early spring), sunset occurs at approximately 6:30 (give or take a few minutes).

 8. The three Synoptic Gospels confirm that Messiah’s last meal before He died was Passover (Matthew 26:17-20; Mark 14:12-16; Luke 22:7-12), yet his “trial” before Pilate occurred the next day on “the Day of Preparation,” which is the day before Passover.

 9. Yeshua was in Bethany six days before Passover (“Jesus, therefore, six days before the Passover, came to Bethany where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead.” — John 12:1)

10. Yeshua’s teaching regarding Torah (but not the “Oral Tradition”) is consistently in line with the teaching of the Pharisees.

11. The Sadducees, who rejected all things supernatural, accepted only the five Books of Moses as inspired, and disagreed with the Pharisees on just about every issue, were in firm control of the Temple and the Priesthood, and therefore controlled the “Temple calendar.”

Matthew, Mark, and Luke all agree that Yeshua and His Disciples prepared (not ate) their Passover “on the first day of Unleavened Bread.” As we have seen, the Torah says that Passover occurs during the first hour of the 14th of Nisan, and that the first day of Unleavened Bread is the next day, the 15th of Nisan. I believe that we can safely assume that Yeshua (Who wrote the Ten Commandments in stone with His finger and handed them to Moses at Sinai) knew the correct date to celebrate Passover (the date that He gave to Moses — Nisan 14). His “trial” before Pilate was was therefore about 14 or 15 hours into Nisan 14, but the “Temple calendar” of the Sadducees put their “Passover” just after sunset on Nissan 15.

So we have a significant problem remaining that I have been unable to resolve in this study: If the Master’s “Last Passover Seder” was properly celebrated just after sunset as the day was starting on Nisan 14 (as Torah requires), then they prepared the Passover in the final five or six hours of Nisan 13 (as Torah requires). The synoptic Gospels all say that “the first day of Unleavened Bread” was Nisan 13, but the Torah (Leviticus 23:5-6) says that “the first day of Unleavened Bread” is Nisan 15.

The members of the priesthood who attended His “trial” before Pilate did not want to enter the building to avoid being “defiled” and disqualified for eating Passover after sunset that evening (which would have been the first hour of Nisan 15).

“Then they led Jesus from Caiaphas into the Praetorium, and it was early; and they themselves did not enter into the Praetorium so that they would not be defiled, but might eat the Passover” (John 18:28 - Show Context).

So apparently the Sadducees actually celebrated their Passover on “the first day of Unleavened Bread,” Nisan 15.

Since the Scriptures must be without error in the original autographs (the parchment that was actually hand-written by the Apostles), I can only assume that between the time that the Synoptics were first written (I believe in Hebrew, originally), then translated into Greek, and then translated into English, there had to have occurred an error in translation, probably due to ignorance of the Hebrew method of keeping time. The Greek word protoß (protos) that is translated as “first” in Matthew and Mark is three other times in the NAS translated as “before” — the word “first” does not appear in the Greek text of Luke. It may possibly be that the original autographs said “before the first day of Unleavened Bread.”

There is one other possibility that I really hesitate to present: the three verses from the Synoptics may possibly have been deliberately redacted by the Roman Church to support their “Good Friday” theology.

The Known Facts Present Challenges to be Resolved

 1. If the crucifixion occurred on “Good Friday” and the Resurrection occurred just before dawn on “Easter Sunday morning” there is absolutely no possible way to account for “the Sign of Jonah.” Assuming that Yeshua died shortly after 3:00 pm and was buried before the onset of the weekly Sabbath shortly before 6:30 pm, there is an absolute maximum of only 39 hours between His death and resurrection. Therefore, this interpretation must be discarded as intellectually untenable.

 2. The Synoptic Gospels (Matt. 26:17, Mark 14:12, and Luke 22:7) all clearly affirm that the Talmidim (Disciples) prepared “the Passover” on “the first day of Unleavened Bread on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed.”

“From His mouth comes a sharp sword, so that with it He may strike down the nations, and He will rule them with a rod of iron; and He treads the wine press of the fierce wrath of God, the Almighty. … And the rest were killed with the sword which came from the mouth of Him who sat on the horse, and all the birds were filled with their flesh.” (Revelation 19:15,21 NAS) [RETURN]