Problems in the order of dates and events during the easter week

Many had varied have been the attempts to place in correct order and exact time the various events surrounding the Last Supper, the trials, and the death and resurrection of our Lord, and the following suggested solution is put forward more as a possibility than as a definitive statement. It is the result of many years of thought based upon a paper submitted to a Bible Class by my father (Brother Grantham Mander) in 1904, and suggests that these events took much longer than the two and a half days allowed by the commonly accepted reckoning, which is that the Last Supper occurred on Thursday night, the trials were rushed through during the night and early morning, and the crucifixion was on Friday and the resurrection was at daybreak on Sunday.

The first problem is not new,¹ but is included to complete the general picture. The accepted times do not allow for Jesus to be in the grave the three days and three nights which he prophesied in Matthew 12:40 based on the three days and three nights that Jonah was in the fish’s belly. The answer to this, put forward by many and accepted by the writer, is found, firstly, in the record of the women preparing the spices to anoint the body. Mark 16:1 says they bought the spices “when the sabbath was past” (RSV), while Luke 23:56 says “they returned, and prepared spices and ointments. On the sabbath they rested according to the commandment” (RSV). This would require that they prepared the spices on a day both preceded and followed by a sabbath. Now we know that such a day does occur from time to time. As well as the weekly sabbath, the principal days of the Jewish feasts are referred to as sabbaths, and the Passover, in particular, moves through the week like Christmas Day does. For example, in 1979, the sabbath of the Passover was on a Thursday. Secondly, we read in John 19:31 that that sabbath, spoken of by the Pharisees as the reason for breaking the legs of the crucified, was “an high day”. Thus we get the answer that the crucifixion occurred on a Wednesday. Thursday was a high sabbath. On Friday the women bought and prepared the spices. This also was the day the Pharisees went to Pilate to seal the tomb. If they were so particular during the preparation not to go into Pilate’s judgement hall, how much more particular would they be on a high sabbath, i.e. the Thursday. Saturday was the normal sabbath and the resurrection occurred “early on the first day” i.e. any time after 6 p.m. on Saturday, because when Mary Magdalene came “while it was yet dark” the stone had already been taken away. This would allow exactly three days and three nights for Jesus’s body to have been in the earth.

It is the second problem, concerned with the trials themselves, that is of particular interest. Firstly let us be quite clear that, of all the trials (i.e. those before the Jewish councils, before Herod, and the three before Pilate), only the unofficial and illegal interview in the High-Priest’s house occurred during the night. This is perfectly clear on two grounds. From Matthew (26:57-68) we read the details of this “trial” and the fact that Peter was there till cock-crow, because Jesus “turned and looked upon Peter”. In all three synoptic gospels this incident is followed by a statement that the next thing that happened was in daylight. Matthew 27:1 says, “when morning was come”; Mark 15:1, “and straightway in the morning”; and Luke 22:66, “as soon as it was day”. Since the whole episode occurred in Palestine at the time of the spring equinox (Passover time) “day” could not have begun before 6 a.m. Now we learn from Mark 15:25 the exact time of the crucifixion: “it was the third hour, and they crucified him”. This would be 9 a.m. by modern timing, and gives us just three hours (from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m.) during which time (it has been assumed) all the incidents of five trials, and one, or perhaps two, scourgings took place.

Now there are some eighteen specific incidents recorded during this period. Some writers in listing the corresponding items in the four gospels make it more (Brother Alfred Norris, in his commentary on Mark, makes it 27). Some of these incidents are fairly brief, like the action of Pilate in washing his hands; but many, as we shall see, must have taken a fair time. The difficulty is that the period from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. is only 180 minutes, during which time the following eighteen episodes, at least, are supposed to have happened:

1. Council called together.
2. Jesus questioned publicly.
3. To Pilate.
4. First trial before Pilate.
5. Jesus sent to Herod.
6. Interview with Herod.
7. Mocking by Herod and his soldiers.
8. Return to Pilate.
9. Second trial before Pilate.
10. Message from Pilate’s wife.
11. The cry for Barabbas.
12. Pilate washes his hands.
13. Scourging.
14. Mocking by Pilate’s soldiers, including the crown of thorns.
15. “Behold the Man”.
16. Third trial before Pilate on the “Pavement”.
17. Walk to Golgotha.
18. The crucifixion.

Now 180 minutes divided by 18 episodes allows only ten minutes for each item. Let us then look at these items in turn and see what the Gospels say about them.

1. We begin with Luke 22:66: “And as soon as it was day, the elders of the people and the chief priests and the scribes came together, and led him into their council”. It is evident that it was realized that the interrogation during the night at the High-Priest’s house would not satisfy either the people as a whole or the Roman authorities. It must be legalized. A proper meeting of “their council” (i.e. the Sanhedrin) must be called. Starting at daybreak it is difficult to imagine that it would be possible to call together and assemble them by 10 minutes past 6 with the necessary formality, even ignoring the statements found in various references to the Sanhedrin’s practices in Jewish literature that the Sanhedrin did not meet till after the morning sacrifice.

2. Then comes the public repetition of the secret trial in the High-Priest’s house (Lk. 22:67-71). Even assuming it was a formality, it would have to be done with due order.
3. Now they led Jesus to Pilate. It certainly was not the same building, because they would not go into Pilate for fear of defiling themselves. How far was Pilate’s judgement hall from the Sanhedrin building, and how much notice did Pilate require to be on his judgement seat with all the trappings of authority? Just to take a group of elderly gentlemen from one building to another takes time—even if they were close—and some maps place them 300 meters apart. There certainly was no interconnecting corridor. Commentators assume that the High-Priest and Pilate had been in collusion during the night, but the Scriptures know nothing of this. Luke 23:2 says “they began to accuse him”; and Pilate, according to John 18:29, did not know why they had come and asked: “What accusation bring ye?”. By the commonly accepted timing this would have to be about 6.20 in the morning; and while John does say it was early (18:28) this does seem a rather exceptionally early hour for a Roman Governor to be seated in his judgement hall.
4. We read that before this first of Pilate’s trials he went out to the chief priests. Was he persuaded to go out at once? Did he run out and back quickly, or did he move with the normal pace of a Governor going unwillingly after determined insistence from those he treated as stubborn enemies? It was obviously not until Pilate realized that there was something wrong with their accusations, from a Roman-law point of view, that he said “Take ye him, and judge him according to your law”. Included in this incident is the private interview that Pilate had with Jesus, recorded in John 18:33-38. Perhaps this was short, but at least it shows that Pilate was trying to get to the bottom of the priests’ accusations. Luke tells us (23:4) that after this interview Pilate told the chief priests and the people: “I find no fault in this man”, indicating that he had examined him at much greater length than just the simple questions reported by John. After this there come again the repeated arguments by the priests (Lk. 23:5).
5. At this point Pilate seizes on the comment that Jesus had come from Galilee, and sends him to Herod. Herod was not expecting Jesus. Luke 23:8 says: “When Herod saw Jesus, he was exceeding glad”. Neither must we imagine —as many writers seem to—that he was in the next room waiting to receive Jesus. At this time Herod and Pilate were still “at enmity” (Lk. 23:12); protocol between them would demand that at least some messenger preceded the cortege escorting Jesus, and that Herod agreed to receive it. The exact position of Pilate’s judgement hall and Herod’s palace are not known, though many maps show them at opposite sides of Jerusalem. At least we can discount the idea that in a mere ten minutes Jesus had been whisked from Pilate to Herod’s palace.

6. Nor was Herod in any hurry. Luke 23:9 says “he questioned with him in many words”, while the chief priests continued their accusations. Herod did not want to get rid of Jesus quickly; he was hoping “to have seen some miracle done by him”.
7. Here we come to the second “mocking” (there had been one in the High-Priest’s house during the night, but this is not included in the daylight activities). Again Herod is in no hurry. Was the “gorgeous robe” there waiting? It was obviously something more than just the garment of the nearest courtier.
8. And so back to Pilate (Lk. 23:11). Not perhaps delayed by protocol, but at least a solemn march from one official residence to another. Again, was Pilate just waiting till Herod had finished his play? Or was he engaged on other matters?
9. At this point comes a most astonishing phrase. Luke 23:13 : “And Pilate, when he had called together the chief priests and the rulers …”. So they did not come back with Jesus from Herod. They had gone away while Herod and his soldiers mocked Jesus. Had they, perhaps, gone home for a night’s sleep?
10. Somewhere at this point comes the message from Pilate’s wife (Matt. 27:19). If all these things happened in three hours in the morning, at what time did Pilate’s wife suffer “many things this day in a dream”? We have no evidence that she even knew of Jesus till the trial. Dorothy Sayers in her dramatization The man born to be King had to invent a chance meeting between Jesus on his triumphal entry into Jerusalem with the cortege of Pilate’s wife in order to get over this difficulty.
11. 11 and 12. The exact position of the cry for Barabbas appears difficult to place. Could this be because it was a slow process convincing the crowd, or that it had to be made over a period of time? At any rate we know that Pilate made three attempts to get them to change their mind and accept Jesus in his place. This is set out at length in Luke 23. In verse 18 they “cried out”. In verse 20 Pilate spake to them “again”, and in verse 22 he spake a “third time”; between which times it says Pilate was “willing to release Jesus”. Quite obviously he was employing every possible delaying tactic; certainly not conspiring with the chief priests to get Jesus crucified quickly. Somewhere during the pressure to release Barabbas comes the incident of Pilate symbolically washing his hands (Matt 27:24, 25). The actual action of Pilate washing his hands obviously did not take long, but the indecision and frustration which led to this action is indicated in the words of John 19:12: “And from thenceforth Pilate sought to release him”.

13. At this point we turn to John, as do many of those who try to get these events in their right order. John 19:1 records the scourging, and many descriptions of this have been given. At least this would not have happened in Pilate’s judgement hall. Jesus would have been taken to an appropriate place, probably in the same building, but in no particular hurry.
14. But now comes a rather strange thing. Instead of hurrying Jesus out to the crucifixion, the soldiers have time to play with him. It is as if they were saying “What shall we do with this Jew who calls himself a king, while we wait till Pilate finally makes up his mind what to do with him?”. Firstly they had time to gather unto him “the whole band”. It was not just those soldiers who were taking Jesus to be scourged (as a matter of record, though they did not know it at the time, there was to be a further trial by Pilate): it was “the whole band”. Quite obviously they had time on their hands. Did somebody think of the crown of thorns in the first moment they were in the common hall? And how long does it take to make a crown of thorns? Why take him into the common hall at all unless they had time to spare? Certainly more than ten minutes. It is more reasonable to say that this was while Pilate was “seeking ways to release him”.
15. Here John records the incident of “Behold the Man”. The mere fact that the evangelists put some part of the Barabbas story before, and some after the soldiers mocking suggests that the Barabbas story was a long drawn out affair gradually stirred up by the agitators on the priests’ behalf.

16. But now, in John 19:8-15, we get a further attempt by Pilate to release Jesus; not in the judgement hall, but in the “Pavement”; and here we have for the first time a specific time given: “about the sixth hour” (v. 14). But from other records (especially Mk. 15:33) we know that Jesus was on the cross at the sixth hour, and had been for three hours (v. 25). “There was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour” (v. 34). Many and various attempts have been made by commentators to explain away this “sixth hour” in John 19:14. Some, of course, just say John was an old man when he wrote his Gospel and had forgotten. Some stress the word, “about” and think 8.30 in the morning is near enough (placing the other events during the night). Bullinger, in his comments in the Companion Bible, makes it the sixth hour of the night (midnight), which would be before Peter’s cock-crow. Brother Alfred Norris in his reconciliation of times does not even include this verse. But if we are faithful to the Scripture record, this one verse alone destroys the idea that all these trials happened in half a morning, or during the night. It requires at least 24 hours.
17. And now there is the walk to Golgotha. Many include here a second scourging, mentioned in Mathew 27:26 and Mark 15:15. If this is correct, more time still must be allowed for. At the very least Golgotha was “outside the city walls”, and with Jesus in his weak condition this itself must have taken longer than the ten minutes we can allow.
18. And finally there is the crucifixion itself, and the incident of “Father forgive” (Lk. 23: 34), though perhaps this happened after “the third hour” referred to in Mark 15:25.

When we come to consider carefully all that is here recorded it is fairly evident that it could not have occurred in just three hours, even if it had been hurried by collusion of all parties; but time and again it appears that no one was in a hurry till after Jesus was on the cross, while neither Pilate nor Herod seem to have had any previous knowledge of the affair. The whole idea of “all over in one night” seems to have arisen after the Catholic church had decided that Easter was to be celebrated on the Friday and the Sunday. It is on record that the date of Easter was the subject of much dispute in the early church. One group, called the Quartodecimans, celebrated the resurrection on the third day after the 14th Nisan (Abib) on whatever day of the week it fell.² Hislop, in The Two BabyIons, says that the details of the celebration of Easter were fixed about 525 A.D. by the Catholic church on the advice of Abbot Dionysius the Little in order to reconcile it with the pagan feast, and was so fixed as to very rarely coincide with the Jewish Passover. All of which suggests that there was no certainty by tradition as to the day or the time of any part of the Easter story; we can only go by what the Gospels say, and must reject the “Thursday night to Sunday morning” constraint as merely an ecclesiastical ordinance given to fit in with the convenience of the Catholic hierarchy.

After the eighteen incidents examined above came the six hours on the cross, including the darkness, and finally Jesus “gave up the spirit” —many believe at the very time that the Passover Lamb was being slain. This leads us back to Exodus 12, where the original details of the Passover are given, and where we read that the lamb was to be taken on the tenth of the month (v. 3) and kept till the 14th day (v. 6), “and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening”. The marvelous exactness of the type in this passage with the actual action of the whole assembly of Israel at the crucifixion has often been spoken of; but what of the days of preparation when the Lamb was kept? Have we not confused our reckoning by imagining that “the preparation” referred to in the Gospels (the word “day” in John 19:42 is in italics and should not be there) was a single day? Was it not rather the days when the lamb was “kept”? It is noticeable that from the time when Jesus sends his disciples to “prepare the Passover” till the crucifixion he does not do any public act, being either with his disciples or under arrest. There does not appear to be any explanation in any commentaries I have seen as to why the lamb was to be so “kept”. Surely so important a detail of the type should have an anti-typical fulfillment.

If now we put all these suggestions together we can construct a chart setting out the order of events. It should be noted that the days shown are primarily Jewish days in the month Abib (sometimes also called Nisan) as given in the first column, and the dividing line is at 6 p.m., the nights preceding the days as is the Jewish custom. This is shown in the third column where the nights are shown by the capital N (see facing page).

We begin with Christ’s last public appearance, on the 9th Abib (in that particular year, a Friday). The lamb was selected on 10th Abib: as it happens, a sabbath. On Sunday 11th Abib Christ sends his disciples to prepare the Passover; and he meets them in the even­ing in the upper room for the last supper, which by this reckoning was held in the late afternoon and early evening of Sunday. The arrest follows during the night (after the three hours in Gethsemane), as does the “trial” in the High-Priest’s house. The Monday and Tuesday are taken up with the trials and all that went with them, and on Wednesday 14th Abib Jesus is crucified, and dies on Wednesday afternoon at the time of the slaying of the Passover Lamb. Thursday is the high sabbath. On Friday the Pharisees seal the tomb, and the women buy and prepare spices. Saturday is the normal sabbath, at the end of which, being three days and three nights from his burial, Jesus rises from the dead, the keepers are stunned, and the stone rolled away. Early in the morning, “while it was yet dark”, Mary Magdalene comes and finds the tomb open and the keepers gone. Sunday brings the searching of the empty tomb and the other well-known incidents, and particularly the walk to Emmaus and the second breaking of bread, exactly at the time when Jesus broke it with his disciples on the previous Sunday. This suggests an added reason why the early disciples held the breaking of bread on the first day of the week. It was on the first day of the week that it was originally instituted, and it was the first day of the week that it was repeated by Jesus at Emmaus after the resurrection.

It may be contended that this solution depends on adding probabilities to possibilities, but this is no more than is often done to fill out the brief details which are frequently all we have of important events in Scripture. At least the scheme shows that the many happenings recorded between Peter’s cock-crow and the incident of “Father forgive” could not possibly have all taken place in three hours.

1. “How long was Jesus in the tomb” is a question which has been discussed many times in our magazines, notably in The Christadelphian (April and June 1972) and The Testimony (Feb., March, and Oct. 1973). R.P.C.
2. Harmsworth’s Encyclopedia—article on Easter.