The case for the Friday crucifixion
There are biblical anchors here to this story. But still a lot of debating has occurred, but only a few have figured it out. About 35 years ago I developed a program for historical and biblical investigation. I call it the Seafarer’s Way because I am an old submariner and it involves hypothetical islands of evidence. Complicated but in short it in involves confidence levels and the amount of evidence and the type of evidence and evidence that connects to other bodies of evidence. The Friday crucifixion and the Sunday resurrection has it all.
The Body of evidence….
Christ was crucified on the day of Preparation. Of course there are several scriptures that indicate that Christ was crucified on the day of preparation for Passover and John 19:31-42 states that…for that Sabbath was a high day… describing it as a high day. More than just the Passover, but also the Jewish Sabbath, it was the Sabbath as stated in Mark 15:42 and indicated in Luke 23:56 that the ladies had….and on the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment…. Now loosely any Jewish holiday can be referred to as a Sabbath…. loosely, but not the Sabbath….only one of them, and it is a commandment from Exodus. So it was during the Passover and the ladies also followed the "Sabbath commandment" from Exodus to rest.
The scriptures describe the women coming to the tomb on the first day of the week, after the Sabbath. Of course we know that the women came early on Sunday morning. Matthew 28:1 Mark 16:2 16:9 Luke 24:1 John 20:1
Then when the women went to the tomb the scriptures make the point that the Sabbath was over. Matthew 28:1, Mark 16:1. But of course the feast of unleavened bread was still in progress. So at this point we know that the Jewish Sabbath and the evening-day of Passover were occurring simultaneously. And Christ was crucified the day before, on the day of Preparation.
The age old issue of time….
From the time Christ died on the cross till He resurrected it was around 39 hours…not even two days. Christ said three days and three nights….But can we even begin to put a stopwatch to this event….maybe a sundial would be better?
The first hurdle you come to when trying to do the arithmetic is when to start the stopwatch on 3 days and 3 nights. The Jewish day starts at dawn. Christ died around 3:00 in the afternoon, so that is approximately 9 hours into the day. So to start with you have to make the decision as to whether you are going to count the day of Christ’s crucifixion, or not. Christ resurrected early on the first day of the week….before dawn or less than an hour into the day….are you going to count that day as a whole day. 3 days and 3 nights. What about the night of the first day of the week? Now you can make those decisions on what to count…..but you will get no instruction from the Bible, so the information on when to click the stopwatch on and click it off is not there. So no matter what day you want to believe that Christ was crucified, you do not have any guidance from the scriptures as to the actual perimeters of the timeframe as it occurred. So it is all your opinion, not biblical. If you do not count either day, the Last Supper is backed up to Tuesday. Just one of the reasons that I do not worry about the math. All time references are in relation to the events. Christ resurrected on Sunday the day after the Sabbath and Passover which was always Saturday and Christ was crucified the day before that...Friday.
And as I explained the date is pinpointed by the lunar cycle for Passover on that date and year.
The observance of the Lord’s Day for early Christians is well established. Because the date of the Passover moved around each year the Ecumenical Council decided to celebrate the resurrection of Christ on the first Sunday after Passover….So Easter also moves around.
Good Friday, the calculation and tradition of the Friday crucifixion and the Sunday resurrection has stood the test of time. We can track the observance of the Friday crucifixion back to before Emperor Constantine and the ecumenical councils.
As with all of my research, I don’t care, I am just looking for the truth. I do not care what day Christ was crucified. Granted historical evidence can be a little tricky. The facts about the World Series can fade, even with professional witness, 40,000 fans present and millions watching on TV and millions of dollars of video equipment focusing on the events. All you can do is look at the evidence and weigh the confidence of the evidence. And all that must be kept in perspective of importance…what matters is that Christ was crucified for us and He resurrected.