Day and Date of Christ’s Crucifixion by O. A. JOHNSON

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D.C. · Feb 12, 1914

Day and Date of Christ’s Crucifixion

By O. A. JOHNSON

Annual Feasts and Annual Sabbaths—No. 5

Day and Date of Christ’s Crucifixion

O. A. JOHNSON

ON the Sabbath following the crucifixion, Christ lay in the tomb. Luke 23: 54-56. This day was the sixteenth of Abib, and on it the priest waved the sheaf of first fruits before the Lord. But it must not be forgotten that this sixteenth day always followed the first Passover sabbath, or the fifteenth of the same month. Lev. 23: 6, 7, 10, 11. In this year of Christ’s crucifixion the wave sheaf was presented before the Lord on the seventh day, Sabbath; wherefore this “Sabbath day was an high day.” John 19: 31. See Clarke’s comment on this verse; also Edersheim’s “Life of Christ,” Vol. II, page 613.

J. B. Dimbleby, in the pamphlet “All Past Time,” published in New Haven, Conn., eighth edition, 1894, page 95, makes the following statements concerning the time of Christ’s crucifixion: “The crucifixion was at the beginning of 31 A. D.” “Jesus Christ was crucified in the middle of the seventh civil [first ecclesiastical] month [Abib, or Nisan], early on Friday, the fifteenth, the day after the Passover;” “Saturday, the old Sabbath day, being the sixteenth.”—Page 67. Under table “m” of the “Ancient Hebrew Solar Cycle,” page 56, the sixteenth of Abib falls on the weekly Sabbath.

From the above it is evident that the day in which Christ was in the tomb was the

Sabbath, the Sixteenth Day of Abib

Christ rose from the dead on the first day of the week, Sunday, being the third day after his crucifixion. Mark 16: 9; Luke 24: 21-23. From what has been said concerning the events on the preceding days, and on which days of the month they occurred, it follows that the resurrection of Christ must have been on

Sunday, the Seventeenth Day of Abib

Christ did not remain in the sepulcher three full days; for he was buried on Friday afternoon, and rose early the following Sunday morning, the third day after his crucifixion. Luke 23: 53-56; Mark 16: 9; 1 Cor. 15: 4. Some have found it difficult to harmonize his resurrection on “the third day” with the statement that “after three days” he should “rise again.” Mark 8: 31. But the following note will explain this apparent contradiction:—

“In common with other nations, the Jews reckoned any part of a period of time for the whole, as in Ex. 16: 35. An attention to this circumstance will explain several apparent contradictions in the Sacred Writings: thus, a part of the day is used for the whole, and part of the year for an entire year. . . .

“Abenezra, an eminent Jewish commentator (on Lev. 12: 3), says that if an infant were born in the last hour of the day, such hour was counted for one whole day. This observation critically reconciles the account of our Lord’s resurrection in Matt. 27: 63 and Mark 8: 31, ‘three days after,’ with that of his resurrection ‘on the third day,’ according to Matt. 16: 21 and Luke 9: 22, and according to fact; for, as our Lord was crucified on Good Friday, about the sixth hour, or noon, the remainder of that day to sunset, according to the Jewish computation, was reckoned as one day. Saturday, it is universally admitted, formed the second day; and as the third day began on Saturday at sunset, and our Saviour rose about sunrise on the following morning, that part of a day is justly reckoned for the third day; so that the interval was ‘three days and three nights,’ or three calendar days current.”—“Horne’s Introduction,” Vol. II, part 2, chap. 4, pages 76, 77. Compare also Ruth 4: 16; 5: 1; Luke 13: 32.

Provision was made in the days of Moses that if for valid reasons some failed to keep the Passover in the first month, they were permitted to keep it on “the fourteenth day of the second month.” Num. 9: 9-12. Later we find the Jews observing two feast days instead of one. “Instead of the people’s keeping the first and last days of the feast as a sabbath, they observed two days in each case.”—“Practical Lessons,” by Gilbert, page 244. “To make, however, assurance doubly sure, it soon became the practice to keep New Year’s Day on two successive days, and this has since been extended into a duplication of all the great feast days.”—“The Temple,” by Edersheim, page 172.

We have already learned that the sixteenth day, on which the wave sheaf was presented to the Lord, must have been on the Sabbath. The second day for this ceremony must have been on the first day of the week, the day of Christ’s resurrection. The following statement from “Desire of Ages,” large edition, page 785, is in harmony with this view: “Christ arose from the dead as the first fruits of those that slept. He was the antitype of the wave sheaf, and his resurrection

took place on the very day when the wave sheaf was presented before the Lord.”

The next feast after the Passover was Pentecost, and that fell on the fiftieth day after the wave sheaf was presented before the Lord. The wave sheaf was waved before the Lord on the sixteenth day of Abib, the day following the first Passover sabbath. Lev. 23: 10, 11, 15-21. In the year of Christ’s crucifixion this wave sheaf was offered on the Sabbath. Fifty days after this would bring us to the day of Pentecost, which also fell on the Sabbath. Therefore the Pentecost mentioned in the second chapter of Acts fell on the Sabbath and not on Sunday.

“The year that the Saviour was crucified, the Passover sabbath fell on Friday, from Thursday evening sunset to Friday evening sunset. The first day of the omer, therefore, would be the Sabbath of the Lord. This day was, then, the first day after the Passover sabbath; therefore, fifty days from this day would again bring us to the seventh day of the week, or the Bible Sabbath. It is thus evident that the Holy Spirit fell on the Sabbath of the Lord, the seventh day of the week. See Lightfoot, Edersheim, and other Hebrew Christian writers.”—“Practical Lessons,” by Gilbert, page 269.

Many other authorities might be quoted who hold that Pentecost fell in this year on the Sabbath of the Lord, and not on the first day of the week. The following might be named: Jennings, in his “Jewish Antiquities;” Olshausen; August Dachel, in his “Comments on Acts 2.”

Walla Walla (Wash.) College.