Passover and Good Friday
I have often heard the question: if Jesus died late in the day on Friday and resurrected very early on Sunday morning, then how was He in the grave three days and three nights? The math does not add up unless you drop one of the nights and count both Friday and Sunday as two of the three days. But the number of hours between Friday evening and Sunday morning are at most 36 hours, or 1 ½ days.
Let’s investigate this question at length in this and the following posts.
Upon comparing the gospels of Mark and John, an honest reader will admit a contradiction regarding where the Passover occurred during the week of events:
Events according to Mark
1) The ‘last supper’ was the Passover meal. (14:12-18)
2) Jesus arrested that night in the garden.
3) Brought before Pilate the day after the Passover meal. (15:1)
4) Crucified the same day.
5) Taken down and buried, for the next day was the Sabbath (15:42)
6) The morning after the Sabbath, the first day of the week, the two Mary’s discover the empty tomb.
Events according to John
1) The ‘last supper’ occurred before Passover. (13:1)
2) Jesus arrested that night in the garden. (18:1-3)
3) Brought before Pilate the morning (still before Passover) (18:28)
4) Crucified the same day, during preparation for the Passover (19:14)
5) Taken down and buried, for the next day was a Sabbath (19:31)
6) First day of the week, one Mary discovers the empty tomb (20:1)
So was Jesus crucified just before the Passover meal or the day after?
Questions like this used to bother me, because I was trained to accept as a basic tenet of my faith that the Scriptures were inerrant. This was one tenet that both the Baptist ministers of my youth and W. Lee agreed upon. In the past, when questions of this type came my way, I felt duty-bound as a Christian to first try to resolve the apparent contradiction by clever arguments. And if that did not work, then I was to fall back on the good old standby excuse that we are dealing with a “transcription error”.
But now I look at these passages and I can now admit to myself that a clear contradiction exists in these two gospels, and that neither a clever argument, such as “there are actually two different suppers being described”, nor a simple transcription error suffice to explain away the contradiction.
So which narrative is correct? Is it even possible to determine which gospel has it right? And does it matter that we takes sides on this question?
I will do my best to address and answer these questions in the next few posts.
Yours in Christ Jesus,