On what day of the week was Jesus crucified, Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday? - Podcast Episode 89

Welcome to the Got Questions podcast. So this time of year, around Easter, every year, it's exciting because from really Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday is our busiest time of year. But that's fun to see, to see so many people landing on our website, questions about Easter, questions about the death and resurrection of Christ.

Those are the type of questions we really wanna answer. So that's exciting. But we also get some unique questions every year around Easter that we really don't get any other time of the year. One of those questions is what we're gonna be covering today and that is on what day was Jesus crucified?

You might be asking, well, isn't it obvious? Isn't every year on our calendar we have Good Friday, the day on which Jesus was crucified, followed by Easter Sunday or Resurrection Sunday, the day that he rose from the grave.

And really for most of church history, it's been a pretty almost unanimously held view that Jesus was crucified on a Friday and was resurrected on a Sunday. Well, it's not quite that simple. So we're gonna be discussing the different options that are out there.

And through all of this, I hope you hear us saying that it's interesting to look into these things and we should study God's word and not be dogmatic just because that's the way Christians have always believed or a position Christians have always held.

But ultimately what's truly most important is that Jesus died for our sins and rose from the grave according to the scriptures. So that's the heart of what we're sharing today. But these issues are important enough and interesting enough that we really want to discuss them.

With you today.

The Friday Crucifixion View and the Challenge of Three Days and Three Nights

So today on the podcast, I have Kevin, the managing editor of Got Questions Ministries and Jeff, the administrator of BibleRef .com. So we're each gonna be taking one of the main viewpoints and it's not necessarily the one that we hold, but there's quite a bit of research that can go into this.

So we kind of divided it up. So I'm gonna be taking the Friday view. And what's most interesting about the Friday view is that at first glance, it seems very simple. So in Mark 15, 42, it says that Jesus was crucified the day before the Sabbath, the Sabbath day.

And the Jewish weekly calendar would be from sundown to sunset. That's how the days were counted. So if Jesus was crucified the day before the Sabbath, the Sabbath being Saturday, then Jesus had to have been crucified sometime before sundown on Friday.

So it seems like a very simple answer. But then you look at different things that have been said with Matthew 12, 40, for example, for as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish.

So the son of man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. So if you're counting from Friday, as if Jesus was crucified on Friday afternoon. So you have Friday day, that's one. Friday night, that's the first night.

Saturday day, that's day two. Saturday night, that's evening two. Then the Bible's clear that Jesus was crucified on Sunday, or resurrected on Sunday morning. So we're at least one night short in this accounting.

So how can Jesus be crucified on a Friday if it was three literal days and three literal nights that he was in the grave? So that's what causes this debate, is trying to figure out, okay, if the Bible says this, well, then obviously it's not wrong, there's not an error.

How do we make sense of this all? So while the Friday has been, again, the most popular view throughout Christian history, more recently, some people are interpreting that Jesus may have been crucified on Thursday or even on Wednesday.

So now Kevin's gonna jump in and kind of present a little bit more about the Thursday viewpoint. So Kevin, take it away.

Yeah, thanks.

I feel like I'm back in speech class in high school where we were handed little slips of paper saying what your topic is for your debate. And then you had prepare that topic, whatever you felt about that topic, this was your topic.

So my topic is the Thursday crucifixion of Jesus Christ. So this is one of those theories that bucks the tradition of the Good Friday, Jesus crucified on a Friday. So with a Thursday view, it really hinges on two things, maybe even three.

I should say that this all hinges on the fact that Jesus was crucified in the year 32. And now the most popular years for Jesus' crucifixion are usually listed as 8030 and 8033. So this falls in between the year 32.

So having said that, this theory that Jesus was crucified actually on a Thursday hinges on fact number one, that there were two Sabbaths that week. There was the regular Sabbath, which Saturday, that happened every week.

But then there was also the special Sabbath that was associated with the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which started with Passover. And we read about that in Leviticus 23, in verses five through eight, that says that the Lord's Passover would begin at twilight on the 14th day of the first month.

Then on the 15th day, the Lord's Festival of Unleavened Bread would begin. And that day, the Jews were to hold a sacred assembly, and then Leviticus 23 says they were to do no work on that day. So it was a day of rest.

There was a special Sabbath that started off the Feast of Unleavened Bread. And so when we read Mark 15, verse 42, which says that Jesus was crucified on Preparation Day, that is the day before the Sabbath, what Mark is referring to there, according to this theory, is the special Sabbath, the Sabbath that was required by Leviticus 23, the Sabbath associated with the Feast of Unleavened Bread and the Feast of the Passover.

And there is actually some support from this in the book of John. John 19, verse 31, says that this was the day of preparation followed by a special Sabbath. And John uses that word special. It was a special Sabbath.

So there was a normal Sabbath and there was the special Sabbath. So these two Sabbaths came back to back on this particular week in AD 32. There was a Sabbath on Friday, which began the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and there was then the regular Sabbath on Saturday.

So Jesus crucified on Thursday, the day before the special Sabbath on Friday. So that's the first thing that this theory hinges on. The second thing would be that the Last Supper that was celebrated by, that we continue to observe, that Jesus held with his disciples, that Last Supper was not the Passover meal.

So people come to this conclusion because of these facts, that there's no lamb mentioned in any of the accounts of that Last Supper meal. And that would, of course, have been the main course. That's an argument from silence.

It's not very strong, but it is true that no lamb is mentioned as part of that. Also, when Judas left the meal in John 13, verse 29, the other disciples assumed it was because Judas had to go and get some things for the Passover.

And so, if they were already eating the Passover, why did he get up and leave to go get stuff for the Passover? It kind of sounds like the Passover was yet future. That Passover feast was yet future. In John 13, in verse one, then John specifies that this, they sat down to eat a meal before the Passover.

So it sounds like, again, Passover is yet future. They're eating this meal then on Thursday evening, I'm sorry, on Wednesday evening, and Passover had not yet occurred. And in John 18, verse 28, the Jews, the Jewish authorities, did not enter Pilate's place because the feast was coming and they were already cleansed ceremonially, and they did not want to defile themselves by going into a Gentile area.

And so they stayed outside Pilate's place. And so that, again, sounds like the Passover is yet future as they are trying to talk to Pilate. And then also in Luke 22, Jesus says that he has desired with great desire to eat this Passover with the disciples, but he will not eat of it until he eats it with them again in the kingdom.

And so, again, people take from that that Jesus was not actually eating the Passover at that time but he was looking forward to the kingdom, the coming kingdom, where he would again eat the Passover. He was not gonna eat it with them at that time.

So that's the Thursday view that Jesus was crucified on that Thursday, the day before the special Sabbath on Friday, then we had the regular Sabbath on Saturday, and he rose from the dead, of course, on Sunday, the first day of the week.

This view would explain a couple of things then, Jesus' statement in Matthew 12 and verse 40 about the three days and three nights that, Shea, you mentioned. So with the Thursday view, he would have been in the grave on Thursday day.

He was put in the grave before sundown. So Thursday day, then he would have Friday day and all day Saturday. And then he would have, of course, that what we would call Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday night.

He was, he rose from the grave before sunrise on Sunday. And so it would give us a full, it would make Jesus' words very literal about the three days and three nights. Also, on the road to Emmaus after the resurrection, the day of the resurrection, Jesus is talking with two unnamed disciples and here in Luke 24 and verse 21, the disciples say to Jesus, it's been three days since all this took place, speaking of the crucifixion of Christ.

And if it were three days since the crucifixion, that would be Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. So Sunday would be the third day since Thursday. And so there was some support for it there possibly, as well.

So am I ready to start celebrating Good Thursday this year instead of Good Friday? Probably not, but the Thursday theory does have a few things to commend it.

When it comes to Wednesday, there's a lot of overlap with the Wednesday and the Thursday views. And part of that is because a lot of the information that comes into the Thursday view is meant to show how it can be awkward or difficult to try to pack some of the things that are going on all into Friday.

Part of what the Wednesday approach to the crucifixion does is it takes that, not necessarily a step further, but it uses a similar approach in noting that there's a lot of things happening that are explained in the gospels between the point of Jesus being crucified and him being resurrected.

And that makes it awkward to try to cram all those things necessarily into that particular timeframe. One of the things that we do have to remember is that scripture is not very specific on exactly when Jesus was resurrected.

What scripture is specific on is when the tomb was found to be empty. So we're not given some explicit particular time when Jesus actually arose from the dead. And that makes a difference in how we look at this because that provides some sliding flexibility in how we choose to interpret things like the three days and the three nights that comes from Jonah.

The Wednesday view does have a few things going for it. I would say that the Wednesday view probably has the most simple explanation in terms of harmonizing the different accounts in scripture. In other words, it requires the least amount of background explanation to simply be able to say, if we look at it from such and such a perspective.

So some of the things that Kevin has mentioned, we've already gone through. One thing we should point out is that it is very possible from the Jewish standpoint to have Sabbaths that are not on a Saturday.

Leviticus talks about certain high holy days. And when you look at the dates that are on those, just from a math standpoint, you can look at those and say, if they're being told that you're going to celebrate the Sabbath on the first day, the 10th day, the 15th day, those can't all be on the same day of the week.

So even without having a deep background in Jewish festivals, we know that not every Sabbath was always gonna be on a Saturday. So the Wednesday view looks at a few different things. We see the women who are going to the tomb.

And one of the things that we notice is that it talks about them purchasing spices. It talks about them resting. Then it says that they're returning. And the way the different verses refer to the timing of that sort of conflicts with the idea that all of these Sabbaths were the exact same day.

So Mark 15, 42, Luke 23 talks about Jesus being buried on the eve of a Sabbath. So just prior to a Sabbath. However, the women who are said to purchase the spices, Mark 16, 1, they are said to have gone and gotten those after a Sabbath.

And then they rested and then they went back with the spices that they had prepared in order to go to see his body and so on and so forth. So that creates this moment of going, wait, it was before a Sabbath, but it was after a Sabbath.

Well, in this Jewish context where you can have more than one Sabbath during a week, that's entirely plausible. The timeframe then for something like Wednesday provides enough room to sort of easily fit in these multiple days.

The downside, so to speak, of the Wednesday view, some people would argue is that the Wednesday view almost provides too much time. That there's now, now we're going beyond three literal days, three literal nights, and now it's actually extending on beyond that.

And there's a few different things we can look at with that. I know that the, Kevin was talking about the disciples on the road to Emmaus, and they talk about the third day. Well, the thing that they said with the third day was that Jesus was condemned and crucified, and it's been three days since these things happened.

But we don't know exactly which part of that they're talking about. Again, we're not given some explicit moment when Jesus was resurrected. So we're not necessarily looking to try to nail this down directly to the minute or to the second.

And the Wednesday view has a lot of things to commend it in that sense, but it has the same issue that you're going to have with a Thursday or a Friday view, which is that unless we're going to start to heckle over whether Jesus was resurrected after exactly 72 hours and zero minutes and zero seconds, or whether it was the clock started from when he died, or whether the clock started from when he was buried, or some other kind of criteria, the primary idea here is not to be that minute and that specific.

But in the Wednesday view, you can see a fairly simple, straightforward approach. He's crucified on Wednesday. There's a Passover on Thursday. That's when they're talking about the women going to get the spices after that, which would be Friday.

After that, they rest, as scripture says, that would be Saturday. Then on Sunday, that's when the tomb is found open. So that's how the Wednesday view kind of fits into that scheme of things. And most of the actual scriptural or factual ideas overlap from what we see in a Thursday view.

It is worth pointing out that there is, as Kevin said, the most common views for the years of Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection are 30 or 33 AD. Those are mostly because people are typically looking for a Friday event.

However, in 31 AD, which is right in that timeframe, the Passover would have been on a Wednesday. So we do have a date that fits within the scheme of things that cooperates with this. So the Wednesday view does have things going for it, but it's not as much of a slam dunk as any of the other views because none of them are necessarily so absolute that we couldn't possibly argue with them or argue against them.

I should add here too, that there is some biblical suggestion that there were more than one Sabbath on that particular week. In Matthew 28, verse one, it says that after the Sabbath, the women started coming to the tomb.

Well, almost every English translation says the Sabbath, but in the Greek, it's actually a plural word. After the Sabbaths, plural, the women started coming to the tomb. So there's that that people latch onto as well to help with the Thursday view or the Wednesday view that there were two Sabbaths.

Why the Exact Day Should Not Become a Divisive Issue

Yeah.

So again, back to the Friday view, strength is, I suppose, that seems to be the view that Christians held even very early on. Christians started celebrating Jesus' crucifixion, resurrection on a Friday to Sunday.

The weakness of it is that you can't get three literal days and three literal nights. And so a lot of Bible scholars I read in this research will even, well, Jesus was basically saying, in a few days, I will rise again.

And using the English word few as if it communicates typically about three days, but the fact that Jesus literally said three days and three nights, if I were to say, hey, Jeff, I'll see you in three days and three nights, at least in our culture, we're going to interpret that as being three full days, approximately 72 hours from now.

Do we have to be that literal in interpreting the passage? That's sort of the question. So if Jesus was just using a colloquialism of saying, I'll see you in about three days, well, then Friday is fine.

Thursday is fine. Even Wednesday is fine. But if you're going to go, no, he literally mean 72 hours. Well, that's when things start to get complicated. So there's so much that goes into this and what makes it interesting is, okay, how literally do we have to interpret it to Jesus' words?

There are some scholars who believe we get to absolutely literal and others, or no, he was just basically saying, hey, see you in a few days, which is correct. I don't know. But that's what makes this very interesting to study because there's so many like cool little details in the gospels that we've even brought up in this conversation of, huh, yeah, that does seem kind of seem like there's two Sabbaths that week with this going on in between.

And yeah, that makes sense, but there's no one of these years, whether it's Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday, is completely free of difficulties. So interesting to study, but not something that we can dogmatically say that it was absolutely Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday.

I think a point that helps with where you're coming from on that avoiding dogmatism is to point out that as long as we wanna take scripture seriously, there are already references in scripture that suggest that the three days and three nights is not meant to be literal in the sense of 72 exact hours.

Esther is an example. In Esther 4 .16 and 5 .1, you see a contrast between something that's said to happen for three days and three nights, and then Esther goes and it says after that, and she communicates.

But when you look at the timeline, there isn't a literal 72 hours in there. So in that Old Testament passage, there seems to be a little bit of a figure of speech involved in that. It's also worth noting that Jesus, when he spoke, he very often quoted scriptures.

And when we quote scriptures, we will use the phrasing that is used in the Bible specifically to reference that particular idea. So if Jesus said the words, just as Jonah, three days and three nights, well, that's exactly what the book of Jonah says.

So he can be quoting the verse, making the reference, making the implication that that sign is meant to come from there without necessarily saying that he's going to follow that exact precise timeline.

So just as you said, in modern speech, when we say those things, we would mean a certain thing behind it. But Jesus wasn't speaking in a modern context and he wasn't speaking in modern speech.

The Meaning of Christ's Death and Resurrection Matters More Than the Exact Day

Guys, I just have to say that this whole thing makes my head spin with trying to figure out the Wednesday, the Thursday, the Friday theories. And some people put so much time and effort into promoting a particular day of the week that Jesus was crucified on.

And they come up with charts and cross-references and some of them are very ornate and elaborate and colorful. They get everything color-coded, Old Testament, New Testament, linking back and forth. And it is really a complex subject and just a fascinating study.

But I don't know how much time I would really want to devote to try to search all this out.

I think a person would have to, you'd have to ask somebody, if you were gonna go back and somehow have a time machine and you were able to stand outside of Jesus' tomb and you were running your stopwatch from whatever time it was supposed to start, if he came out of there six hours or 12 hours before or after the time that you were expected, are you gonna come back and say, well, I guess that's it?

He fulfilled every other prophecy, performed all these other miracles, really did rise from the dead, but he was late when he was coming out of the tomb. So I guess I can't really believe it. Whichever view a person chooses to take is all well and good, but we just have to remember that even if there's a flexibility in that, even if there is some level of nuance or figure of speech or non-literalism or hyper-literalism involved in that, it just does not mean something that we need to stake our faith on.

He is risen. He is risen indeed. And that's the part that matters.

Yeah, amen, Jeff. If I were to point one person away from, not one person, like, if I were to point people away from anything in this conversation, it would be being dogmatic on one of these views. And it got questions.

We've received people who are, wow, like adamantly dogmatic about Wednesday or about Thursday or even about Friday. And like, you know, whether you believe in a Friday crucifixion, a Thursday crucifixion or a Wednesday crucifixion, all these views are well within the realm of evangelical orthodoxy.

None of these views are heretical and none of these views are so explicitly current in scripture that's the only possible view. So this is definitely something we need to show each other some grace. Yes, study these issues and come to the conclusion that you think is biblical, but don't make it a issue worth dividing over.

In our culture and really for Christian culture for nearly 2000 years, we celebrated Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday. I see no reason to stop doing that. I love attending a Good Friday service. I think it's a good reminder of how the disciples and Jesus followers would have felt on Good Friday and then come to the celebration of Easter or of Resurrection Sunday.

And just even the fact that every Sunday we worship is a celebration of Christ's resurrection. So while if I would try to nail down what my viewpoint is, Friday seems to have the least explicit biblical support, but Thursday and Wednesday both seem equally valid.

So I don't know, maybe I'm somewhere between Friday and Thursday, but all that doesn't matter. What we really wanna focus on in this conversation is as 1 Corinthians says, Jesus died for our sins according to scriptures.

He was buried. He was raised on the third day according to scriptures and He appeared to many witnesses. So that's what we should be focusing on, proclaiming the meaning of Christ's death and His victory and His resurrection and what that means for us that by faith in Him, by trusting in Christ alone, we can have our sins forgiven.

We promised an eternal home in heaven and resurrection bodies that were guaranteed by Christ's own resurrection. So study these issues, enjoy the study, but don't be dogmatic about it and don't make this something that you think is worth dividing over.

So hope our conversation has been encouraging and edifying to you and encourage you, study God's word and we have a few articles on this issue. If you wanna learn more, dig into it a little deeper, there's some good scriptures, some good content that you could begin your deep dig that way.

This has been the Got Questions podcast on what day was Jesus crucified? Got questions? Biblize answers.

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