Holy Week--the Timeline Thought Through

Jessica over at Scottish Twins wrote this post last weekend, and it was so thought-provoking for me I asked her if I could share it over here.  I edited it just a little to take out personal references, but otherwise this is her thought process as it flows--which I found fascinating, and thought you might enjoy reading too. 

.   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .


Happy Palm Sunday, sisters!  Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!!

I spent yesterday morning preparing my homeschool curriculum for the coming week.  I decided it would be fun to make a book with the kids starting today, Palm Sunday, in which each page equals one day of the week.  They can fill it with Bible verses, pictures and other symbols that represent what happened that day in Jesus' life leading up to the Resurrection.

In doing my planning, I ran into the same stumbling block I find every year, but always find I am too busy to study in depth - the fact that Good Friday is not three days and three nights prior to the Resurrection, as Jesus said it would be (Matthew 12:40).  And since I know that the Bible cannot contradict itself, I knew there had to be a logical explanation for this and I wanted to figure it out before I started my lessons with the kids.

Before I get into this, I just want to say that none of this really matters in the grand scheme of things.  I mean, we celebrate Jesus' birth on a day that we all know is nowhere near the real date of His birth on our calendars.  The point of Christmas is that He WAS born and the point of Easter is that He DID die and WAS Risen!  The rest is just details, but it's still fun to study......at least for me, a total theology geek.

So, traditionally Holy Week goes like this - Palm Sunday is the Sunday before Resurrection Sunday, Maundy Thursday follows and celebrates the Last Supper/washing of the disciples' feet, Good Friday commemorates the death of Jesus, and Easter Sunday obviously celebrates the Resurrection.  Technically, Easter Sunday isn't a part of Holy Week for Catholics, but it is in our family :)

Here is what we know from the Bible:

1. In John 2:1, Jesus was in Bethany six days before the Jewish Passover and requested that His disciples fetch a donkey for the trip to Jerusalem (this would have been Friday night/Saturday morning according to the Jewish calendar).  That night, Saturday night, a dinner was given in His honor (John 12:2).
2. The next morning (during the daylight hours of Sunday), Jesus entered Jerusalem (John 12:12-15).
3. He was crucified and died just as the Jews' Passover lamb was being slaughtered (on 14 Nisan according to the Jewish calendar), which fulfilled Scripture.
4. Jesus said He would be inside the earth for three days and three nights following His death, just as Jonah was in the belly of the whale for that long - another fulfillment of Scripture.
5. John 19:31 tells us that the Sabbath day following His death was a High Day - a Jewish Holiday (Passover).
6. Mary went to the tomb before the sun was up on the first day of the week (late Saturday night or early Sunday morning according to the Jewish calendar) and found that Jesus had Risen.

OK, so those are the clues that the Bible tells us about the timeline of Jesus' death.  Throughout history, the Church has assumed that Jesus had to have died on Friday, because He died the day before the Sabbath, and in fact, they were trying to rush the deaths by breaking legs so that it could be done by sun-down, when the Sabbath began.  Since the Jewish Sabbath takes place on Saturday, His death had to be on Friday, right?

There Were Two Sabbath Days in a Row

Jews also count their High Holy Days (mentioned above in John 19) as Sabbath days - days like Rosh Hashannah, Yom Kippur, and also the first and seventh days of Passover.  It just so happens that Jesus was crucified the day before Passover, on the day of preparation when the lamb is slaughtered.  The day following his death would have been Passover - a High Holy Day and Sabbath Day.  Both Friday and Saturday were Sabbath days that week.

The Lord's Supper was the Lord's Passover

The day before Passover, when Jesus died, is 14 Nisan on the Jewish calendar (it is discussed in detail in Leviticus 23:5).  As with all Jewish days, it begins at sundown.  On 14 Nisan at sundown there is a special meal called the Lord's Passover, which commemorates the Exodus of the Jews.  This isn't a typical Passover seder, but rather a special meal consisting of only wine and unleaven bread.  THIS is the meal that we call the Last Supper, in which Jesus gave instructions for Communion to His disciples.  This meal was not a Passover seder, as many think.

Passover Couldn't Have Been on Saturday

If the day before Passover had been Friday, when most people think Jesus died, and Passover fell on Saturday, Jesus couldn't have arrived in Jerusalem on Sunday.  John 12:1 says that Jesus was in Bethany six days before Passover.  Instead, Passover had to have been on Friday, putting Jesus in Bethany on Saturday, when He requested His disciples to get a donkey so He could arrive in Jerusalem on Sunday.

The Real Timeline

On the year that Jesus died, 14 Nisan began on sundown Wednesday.  So, Jesus ate the Last Supper with His disciples on Wednesday night.  After the sun rose on Thursday, at 9:00 am, He was crucified, and at 3:00 pm He died (Matthew 27:46-50).  Once the sun went down on Thursday night, it became 15 Nisan on the Jewish calendar (the first day of Passover - a High Holy Day and Sabbath), at which time the Passover lamb that was slaughtered during Jesus' crucifixion was eaten.  The day following Passover was the Jews' normal weekly Sabbath.  This explains why no one went to the tomb earlier - it was another Sabbath.

14 Nisan = sundown Wednesday/sundown Thursday = Lord's Passover/Lord's Supper = day of preparations for Passover = Jesus crucified (9:00 am) and died (3:00 pm) Thursday = Day 1 of Jesus in the earth after death
15 Nisan = sundown Thursday/sundown Friday = PASSOVER = SABBATH DAY = Night 1 and Day 2 of Jesus in the earth after death
16 Nisan = sundown Friday/sundown Saturday = SABBATH DAY = Night 2 and Day 3 of Jesus in the earth after death
17 Nisan = sundown Saturday/sundown Sunday = RESURRECTION on Sunday morning before sunrise = Night 3 of Jesus in the earth after death

This is the only way I can make sense of the timeline without any contradictions in Scripture.  If Jesus died on Friday, He would not have been in the earth three days and three nights.  At the most it would have been two days and two nights.  If He DID die on Friday, than He would have had to have been Resurrected on Monday, which we know isn't true because the Bible says Mary visited the tomb on the first day of the week - Sunday.  And then if this is the case, the Last Supper couldn't have been on Thursday, because that was when Passover began, when the Jews would have been eating the Passover lamb, and the Bible tells us that Jesus was dead before the lamb was eaten.  Therefore, the Last Supper had to have been eaten on Wednesday night - the night of the Jews' Lord's Passover, which makes more sense symbolically and because that meal typically consists only of bread and wine - the two foods mentioned in the Bible.

Like I said, none of this really matters in the grand scheme of things, as all that really matters is that Jesus died and lives again.  I just thought it would be a fun thing to research so I could better explain it to my own children.  Good Friday NEVER made sense to me and I don't want my kids to have the same confusion.

I wonder how this confusion happened?  I wonder if it was ignorance to the Jewish calendar and a lack of understanding about how Jewish Holy days work.  Scholars have been saying that these dates are wrong for centuries, but the Catholic church holds firm to tradition.  And Protestant churches have established their own traditions based on the Catholic ones. 

I think that as new information surfaces - new historical texts and documents or better understandings and translations of original texts - we need to rethink these kinds of things.  So in our curriculum plan for this week I changed our Holy Week timeline for the kids.  Their books will have the Lord's Supper (Maundy Wednesday) on Wednesday night, Jesus' death and burial on Thursday afternoon (Good Thursday), and the Resurrection on Sunday.

.   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .

I had always thought the three days just meant Friday was counted because Jesus died before sundown, which was when Saturday technically began for the Jews, and then Sunday would have started at sundown the next day.  So three different days would have passed by the time he arose, just not 3 complete 24 hour days. But I thought Jessica's research was really helpful--and illuminating!

It feels weird to say, "Happy Good Friday!" to you all.  But may you have a renewed connection to God the Father, through communion with His Son, by the power of His Holy Spirit this day, and this weekend.