The Timing of the Triumphal Entry, Last Supper, Crucifixion, and Resurrection

I set out to answer one simple question: Does the Feast of Firstfruits fall on the day after the weekly Sabbath of Unleavened Bread or on the day following the first High Sabbath of Unleavened Bread. I thought the question could be easily answered by verifying the translation of the two Torah passages that define this feast, but I quickly discovered that the question isn't so simple. The original Hebrew is ambiguous, and prominent rabbis debated the question thousands of years ago. Convinced that the Spring Feasts are prophetic of the events surrounding Yeshua's Crucifixion and Resurrection, I hoped the Gospels would have the answer. Unfortunately, they are also ambiguous.

There are three major events of the Passion Week that need to be placed on the monthly and weekly calendars before a definitive answer can be had.

1. The Triumphal Entry
2. The Crucifixion
3. The Resurrection

The traditional Roman Catholic chronology puts the Triumphal Entry on Sunday, the Crucifixion on Friday, and the Resurrection on the second Sunday. Most Protestants follow the Catholic tradition, however there is a minority opinion that the Crucifixion had to occur on Thursday in order to align with three other factors:

1. Yeshua promised to rise after three days and three nights.
2. The timing of the Feast of Firstfruits.
3. The timing of the presentation of the Passover Lamb.

Triumphal Entry

Many non-Catholic Christians and Messianics say Yeshua's entry into Jerusalem had to happen on 10 Nisan to fulfill the command in Exodus 12:3-6 that the Passover lamb must be presented for inspection on that date. However, the rabbis teach that this command only applied to the first Passover in Egypt and was not to be followed afterwards. It seems to me out of character for God to tie a sacred ritual to a single date in history for two reasons. First, all of the other Moedim are prophetic and are repeated annually. Second, although it might only be my own desire to fit data into patterns, God seems to be a God of patterns. What has happened before, will happen again. What happened to the fathers, will happen to the sons. For this reason, I side with the Christian tradition of placing Yeshua's Triumphal Entry on 10 Nisan. At least in my own mind, that settles the day on the monthly calendar, but what about the day of the week? The Torah only says 10 Nisan, so it will be on a different day each year. With a few minor exceptions Christians place this day on Sunday in the year of Yeshua's Crucifixion without regard to the date, but I found nothing in the Gospels to indicate the day of the week, so this is based purely on tradition and not Scripture.

Matthew and John tend to be more precise in their chronology than Mark and Luke, or at least they are more precise in their wording. John states that "Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany" (John 12:1). All of the Gospels and the Acts use the term "Passover" to refer not to the Passover of Torah (14 Nisan), but to the first day of Unleavened Bread (Nisan 15). According to a strict Greek calculation then, six days before the Passover would be 9 Nisan. If the fuzzy-count theory of Jewish days is used (see Resurrection section below), then this could be 10 Nisan, but certainly no earlier than 9 Nisan.



At Bethany, Lazarus' sister Mary anointed Yeshua's feet, there was a large gathering of people who had come to see Yeshua and Lazarus, and the priests plotted against Lazarus (John 12:1-11). John says that the Triumphal Entry took place the next day (John 12:12).

If all of the those events took place on a single day, then the Triumphal Entry was on 10 Nisan, which matches with the Torah's instructions concerning the Passover lamb. If the events took two days, then the Triumphal Entry was on 11 Nisan. The remainder of the Passion Week narrative precludes any date later than the 11th.

The only question remaining concerning the Entry concerns on which day of the week it occurred. That will have to wait until we address the dates of the Crucifixion and Resurrection.

Crucifixion

Despite some confusion among Christian writers, we know that Yeshua's Passover meal and his Crucifixion were on 14 Nisan because that is the day on which the Torah commanded the Passover lamb should be sacrificed. If Yeshua was perfectly obedient to Torah, then his own personal Passover lamb would have been killed early on 14 Nisan so that he could have the Passover meal with his disciples that evening. If he was the whole world's Passover Lamb, then he would have been killed late on 14 Nisan. God does not depend on the traditions and disagreements of men, and we can be sure that he arranged circumstances so that the focal point of all history would take place precisely on the day he intended. (The Torah actually allows for a Passover lamb to be killed on 14 Sivan, but that is only in exceptional circumstances. Since Yeshua was in Jerusalem at the time, that provision would not have applied.)

There are essentially two competing weekdays for the Crucifixion. According to Catholic tradition, it was on Friday. According to a minority Protestant tradition, it was on Thursday. The difference of opinion stems from differences in interpreting the phrase "three days and three nights" (See Matthew 12:40) and in interpreting the commands concerning observance of the feasts of Firstfruits and Shavuot. More on that as I discuss the timing of the Resurrection as the days and dates of the Crucifixion and Resurrection are interdependent.

Resurrection

The situation with the Resurrection is precisely the opposite of that with the Triumphal Entry. The Scriptures are clear about what day of the week it was, but not about what date. Yeshua rose from the grave sometime between sunset on the Roman Saturday and sunrise on Sunday when the Marys arrived at the tomb. Whether at night or in the early morning hours, this was the first day of the week according to the Hebrew reconing. The Gospel accounts are unanimous on this point. But before we can know what the date was, we have to decide what is the meaning of two other ideas in Scripture:

1. Shabbat in Leviticus 23:10-21, Numbers 28:26, and Deuteronomy 16:9-10.
2. The meaning of "three days and three nights" and related phrases throughout the Gospels.

I believe the Resurrection was prophesied by the day of Firstfruits, just as the Crucifixion was prophesied by Passover. Since God does not prophesy idly, I am certain that the Resurrection took place on the day of Firstfruits, not approximately or a few minutes before or after, but precisely on the right day. Unfortunately, neither the Torah nor the Gospels give an explicit date for Firstfruits. It simply says "on the day after the Sabbath." In this context, that is a little ambiguous. It could mean on the day after the weekly Sabbath, which would put Firstfruits always be on a Sunday, or it could mean on the day after the first day of Unleavened Bread (15 Nisan), which is a high Sabbath. In the latter case, the date of Firstfruits would always be 16 Nisan, while the day would change from year to year.

The law concerning Shavuot (aka Pentecost) appears at first to shed some light because it is to be observed exactly 50 days after Firstfruits or the day after the seventh Sabbath after the start of Unleavened Bread. If Shavuot always immediately follows a weekly Sabbath it must be on a Sunday. And if Shavuot is always 50 days after Firstfruits, Firstfruits must also always be on a Sunday. Unfortunately the Hebrew isn't so precise. The instructions for Shavuot are ambiguous just like those for Firstfruits. The word for Sabbath in these verses (Leviticus 23:16 and Deuteronomy 16:9) can also be translated as "week" or "seven days", so that Shavuot isn't necessarily calculated by counting seven Sabbaths. It could also be the day after the seventh week from the start of Unleavened Bread. In that case, Firstfruits would always be on 16 Nisan, and Shavuot would always be on 6 Sivan.

We also know from the book of Acts that Shavuot in that year was on a Sunday. [Do we? Evidently I was relying on erroneous memory on this point, because I don't see that in Acts now at all. I'll be revisiting everything in this essay at some point. -JHC 4/30/2016] Shavuot commemorates the day on which the Torah was given to Israel at Sinai and prophesied the day on which the Holy Spirit was given to Israel in Jerusalem following the Resurrection. Unfortunately, this doesn't solve the problem either. If Firstfruits and 16 Nisan coincidentally fell on a Sunday in that year, then 6 Sivan would also, since 16 Nisan and 6 Sivan will always fall on the same day of the week in every year.

Although the debate is more than two thousand years old, the majority opinion of both Jewish and Christian theologians has been that "weeks" is the proper interpretation of Shavuot, hence the English name "Feast of Weeks," and that Shavuot always falls on 16 Nisan. As Yeshua's repeated run-ins with the Pharisees demonstrate, tradition is not Scripture, but I am loathe to disregard the weight of nearly all scholarly testimony based on my own reading of the English translations of two or three passages that are ambiguous even in the Hebrew.

Setting aside that argument for now, I'll consider the "three days and three nights" controversy.

Jewish and Catholic tradition both place Firstfruits on 16 Nisan, although the Catholics would not define it that way. If Yeshua was crucified late on 14 Nisan and resurrected before dawn on 16 Nisan, then Yeshua would have been in the grave 2 nights and one day, at most. A minority Christian tradition says that Firstfruits is always on a Sunday and that Passover can be from 1 to 7 days earlier. Yeshua could have been crucified on Wednesday or Thursday afternoon. The following chart shows how many days and nights he would have been in the tomb in each scenario.

Crucifixion	Resurrection	Days	Nights
Wednesday	Saturday night	3	3
Thursday	Sunday morning	2	3
Friday	Sunday morning	1	2

At first, it appears that only a Wednesday Crucifixion and Saturday night Resurrection can satisfy the requirements of three days and three nights in the tomb. Once again, there are translation and cultural issues which make the question more complicated than it appears. Prophecies and statements throughout the New Testament concerning the Resurrection are ambiguous:

Matthew 12:40 - "...three days and three nights in the heart of the earth."
Matthew 16:21 - "...be raised again the third day."
Matthew 17:23 - "...the third day He will be raised again."
Matthew 20:19 - "And the third day He shall rise again."
Mark 8:31 - "...after three days rise again."
Mark 9:31 - "He shall rise the third day."
Mark 10:34 - "And the third day He shall rise again."
Luke 9:22 - "...and be raised the third day."
Luke 13:32 - "...and the third day He will rise again."
Luke 24:7 - "...and the third day rise again?"
Luke 24:21 - "...today is the third day since these things were done."
Luke 24:46 - "...to rise from the dead the third day..."
John 2:19 - "...in three days I will raise it up."
Acts 10:40 - "...God raised Him up the third day..."
1 Corinthians 15:4 - "...He rose again the third day..."

(I omitted statements made by Yeshua's enemies.)

All of these statements can't be literally true. Was the Resurrection to be after three days and three nights, after three days, or on the third day?

The traditional Christian explanation for this ambiguity is that the term "three days and three nights" is a Hebrew idiom that is not meant to be understood literally. It really only means "on three days" or "for at least part of each of three days." This is similar to how a person might say he worked on a project for three whole days, when he really only means that he worked most of three eight hour shifts. This interpretation aligns with the majority of citations which state that Yeshua was raised "on" the third day and eliminates a Wednesday Crucifixion as a erious possibility, since it would require that Yeshua be in the grave for all of three 24-hour periods (Nisan 15, 16, & 17) plus small portions of two more days (Nisan 14 and 18).

If Passover, 14 Nisan, is counted as the first day, a Friday Crucifixion allows for Sunday to be called "the third day," as long as pre-dawn Sunday is considered part of the day, as it would be by Jews. Since Yeshua was buried at twilight between 14 and 15 Nisan, Sunday can still be called "the third day" if 15 Nisan is counted as the first day.

One other piece of evidence supports the shortest period of time spent in the grave (Friday evening to Sunday morning). The Marys watched Yeshua's burial in the tomb and then waited until after the Sabbath to purchase spices for the body. The text makes no mention of the double-Sabbath which would have happened that year if the Crucifixion was on Thursday. Friday would have been the first day of Unleavened Bread and a High Sabbath. It seems an odd omission.

The Triumphal Entry Again

An interesting corollary to this information is that the Triumphal Entry was probably not on Sunday. There are two reasons for this. First, I believe that Yeshua entered Jerusalem on 10 Nisan. If Thursday was 14 Nisan, then the Triumphal Entry was on Monday. If Friday was 14 Nisan, then the Triumphal entry was on Tuesday. Second, John seems to indicate that Yeshua entered Jerusalem on the day after he traveled to Bethany and crowds of people came out to meet him. I don't think he would have walked from Jericho to Bethany (more than 10 miles) on a Sabbath, so he probably made this journey on Sunday. Therefore, Palm Sunday is almost certainly an errant tradition.

Conclusion and Summary

I believe the following points are solid enough to be considered "facts":

1. The Triumphal Entry was on 10 Nisan, which was either Monday or Tuesday.
2. Yeshua's Passover meal was on 14 Nisan after sunset, which we would call either Wednesday or Thursday night, depending on the timing of Firstfruits.
3. The Crucifixion was on the afternoon of 14 Nisan, which was either Thursday or Friday, again depending on the timing of Firstfruits.
4. The Resurrection was on Firstfruits sometime between sunset Saturday and sunrise Sunday, which was either 16 or 17 Nisan.

Here are the best arguments for a Thursday Crucifixion and 17 Nisan Firstfruits:

1. The Torah pointedly does not specify a date for either Firstfruits or Shavuot. This is odd since all other Moedim are given specific dates.
2. The Torah commands concerning Firstfruits and Shavuot can reasonably be interpeted to mean both are always on a Sunday. Even the ancient rabbis agreed that this was a reasonable interpretation of the Hebrew text.
3. Two full days plus a partial day and three full nights agrees with a literal interpretation of most of the Gospel prophecies of a Resurrection on the third day as well as with a colloquial interpretation of "three days and three nights".
4. The rabbis in the Babylonian Talmud argue that if Firstfruits is always on a Sunday, then there is no need to calculate the day of Shavuot, while the Torah commands that we "count for ourselves" 50 days to Shavuot. I believe this is a much stronger argument for the opposite, that if Firstfruits is always on 16 Nisan, then there is never any need to calculate the date of Shavuot. It will always be on 6 Sivan. If Firstfruits is always on a Sunday, you will never know the date of Shavuot from year to year without counting the days.

Here are the best arguments for a Friday Crucifixion and a 16 Nisan Firstfruits:

1. The majority opinion of both rabbis and Christian theologians for at least two thousand years has favored a 16 Nisan Firstfruits.
2. The Torah commands concerning Firstfruits and Shavuot can reasonably be interpreted to mean the former is always on 16 Nisan and the latter is always on 6 Sivan.
3. Two full nights, one full day, plus one partial day agrees with an idiomatic interpretation of the Gospel prophecies of a Resurrection on the third day.

Although the textual evidence for a Thursday Crucifixion and Sunday Firstfruits seems stronger to me, the evidence of tradition and the opinion of innumerable more learned men than me cannot be ignored. Because there is so much ambiguity in the original languages and in the textual evidence, I am unable (or unwilling) to say definitively that one or the other theory is correct.

Unsatisfying conclusion? You bet. I don't like it either. Entire books can be (and have been) written attempting to answer this question, but barring a direct revelation from God, I don't think it can be answered any more definitively. I suggest you and your congregation take a vote and go with the majority opinion. You might end up being wrong, but at least you'll be wrong together.

Whatever you decide, remember the words of King Hezekiah when he restored Passover during his reign:

"May the good LORD pardon everyone who sets his heart to seek God, the LORD, the God of his fathers, even though not according to the sanctuary's rules of cleanness." (2 Chr 30:18-19)