Template talk:Jesus Passion chronology

Sources

An explanatory note on how this chronology was made.

The most important sources for making this chronology were:

• Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium (1999), p. 32–36.
• Bart D. Ehrman, Readers’ Mailbag June 4, 2017. The Bart Ehrman Blog.
• Various Bible translations available at https://biblehub.com/.
• Hebrew calendar names of weekdays: Hebrew calendar#Names of weekdays.
• The date of Passover (15 Nisan) is different every year, always in late March or early April. It is unknown in which year Jesus was crucified exactly, so 1 April is taken as the average date. At that time of the year in Jerusalem, sunrise is around 6 a.m., and sundown around 6 p.m.. Sundown marks the start of a new day in Judaism, so this is set at 6 p.m. in the chronology. The timeline itself is divided in segments of 3 hours each, with t=1 being midnight of Wednesday to Thursday (i.e. 6 hours into Yom Khamishi), and t=26 being 9 a.m. on Sunday (i.e. 15 hours into Yom Rishon).
• The day of Passover can also fall on any day of the week. Note that Jews are not supposed to work on the Sabbath, and therefore have to prepare the Sabbath meal a day earlier; however, Jews are allowed to work on Passover. So it's possible that on Passover day they need to prepare the Sabbath meal (which is the case in Mark, Matthew and Luke), or that Passover and Sabbath coincide (making it a special Sabbath, according to John 19:31, variously translated as a 'special/great/high' Sabbath), and so the day before is both in preparation of Passover and Sabbath (which is the case in John).

Ehrman's summary is as follows: 'So Mark and John agree that Jesus died on a Friday. For Mark that was the day of Passover itself, the morning after the Passover meal [Seder] had been eaten; for John, it was the day of Preparation for the Passover, the day before the Passover meal was eaten. For Mark it was the Day of Preparation for the Sabbath – for John it was the Day of Preparation for the Sabbath AND for the Passover. Mark therefore does not contradict himself (in 15:42); but he does contradict John' (Ehrman 2017).

Besides, Jesus' trial before Pilate seems to have lasted much longer in John than in Mark. Even though they agree the trial started '(very) early in the morning' (Mark 15:1; John 18:28), Mark 15:25 states Jesus was crucified at 9 o'clock in the morning, whereas John 19:14 states that Jesus was crucified after noon (12 o'clock) (Ehrman 1999). John's narrative is also much more elaborate, with Pilate constantly walking in and out of the praetorium to interrogate Jesus held captive inside on the one hand and the chief priests standing outside on the other. By contrast, in Mark, Pilate asks Jesus a single short question, to which Jesus gives a single short answer and otherwise remains silent.

Other, arguably less significant, differences include the following:

• John doesn't mention Gethsemane, but does mention a garden on the east bank of the Kidron river, so that would have been somewhere in the Kidron Valley between the Kidron and the Mount of Olives, which arguably fits the descriptions of Gethsemane in Mark and Matthew (in Luke, however, Gethsemane isn't mentioned either and the night watch and arrest of Jesus all seem to take place on the Mount of Olives).
• Unlike the synoptic gospels, John doesn't mention any mocking of Jesus by anyone near him; he does mention the Quod scripsi, scripsi incident, which the synoptics don't.
• Unlike the synoptic gospels, John doesn't mention any crucifixion darkness.
• Mark mentions the death of Jesus at 3 o'clock in the afternoon after the three-hour darkness. John doesn't specify the time, just that it was 'later', but still the day of preparation for the special Sabbath (John 19:28–31), so before sundown around 6 o'clock; John goes on to say Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus (the latter is not mentioned by the synoptics) managed to bury Jesus before the Sabbath began, so also before 6 o'clock. It's therefore possible that John's Jesus also died around 3 o'clock.
  Note that John reports the Roman soldiers were surprised to find that Jesus died as soon as he did when they were tasked to break his legs (John 19:31–33). Similarly, but differently, Mark reports that Pilate was surprised to hear Joseph of Arimathea say that Jesus died as soon as he did, and he sent a centurion to verify this (Mark 15:42–45). Mark's Jesus was crucified 3 hours earlier, so if one is to assume that John's Jesus also died around 3 o'clock, John's Jesus took 3 hours to die (which reportedly surprised the Roman soldiers) instead of 6 hours according to Mark (which reportedly surprised Pilate); despite having double the time to die in Mark, Pilate was still surprised at Jesus' quick death.
• In Mark 16:1–2, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome set out to anoint Jesus' body, and arrived at the empty tomb just after sunrise. In John 20:1, only Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb (for no apparent reason; Joseph and Nicodemus reportedly already anointed/embalmed Jesus when they buried him 2 days earlier), when it was still dark, so some time before sunrise.

Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 12:13, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

Units of time

@Nederlandse Leeuw: what are the numbers (1-25) along the bottom? StAnselm (talk) 17:48, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Units of 3 hours. Eight units equals one day. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 18:00, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Wow, that is not clear at all. That needs to be explained in the template. StAnselm (talk) 03:36, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Fair enough, although I did explain this above: The timeline itself is divided in segments of 3 hours each, with t=1 being midnight of Wednesday to Thursday (i.e. 6 hours into Yom Khamishi), and t=26 being 9 a.m. on Sunday (i.e. 15 hours into Yom Rishon). If you know a better way of displaying it, I'm open to suggestions. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 00:07, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

@Metropolitan90 Thanks for calling an error to my attention at my talk page; I'll respond here so others can also read along. You're right that Yom Shabbat is incorrectly shown as a day of 18 hours rather than 24, as Yom Shishi is. I'll try to fix that.

The reason why I have chosen 3-hour units is for practical convenience: all times explicitly mentioned in the 4 canonical Gospels are divisible by 3. A great example is the Crucifixion darkness, which lasted for approximately 3 hours. Moreover, sunset in Jerusalem around the time of year of Jesus' reported crucifixion (the date of Passover (15 Nisan) is different every year, always in late March or early April) would have been around 6 a.m., and sundown at 6 p.m., also divisible by 3. The greatest difference of importance between the Gospels is that Mark 15:25 states Jesus was crucified at 9 o'clock in the morning, whereas John 19:14 states that Jesus was crucified after noon (12 o'clock) (Ehrman 1999), also a 3-hour difference. As days have 24 hours, this is also divisible by 3. Therefore, using 3-hour units of time makes for a relatively easy to construct and amend approximate timeline of events.

I emphasise this is approximate. None of the events will have lasted exactly three hours. All we know is the sequence of events and some indications of time. We are told that the Last Supper was eaten after sundown around on Thursday 6 p.m., so in the beginning of Yom Shishi. Therefore, Jesus and the disciples were at Gethsemane / a garden in Kidron at night (with some disciples inadvertently falling asleep), then the Arrest of Jesus happened some time later that night. And eventually the Sanhedrin trial of Jesus happened (at the house of either Caiaphas according to the Synoptics or at Annas according to John), which ended '(very) early in the morning' (Mark 15:1; John 18:28), after which Jesus was transferred to Pilate and the trial at Pilate's court began. A reasonable estimate is that '(very) early in the morning' (πρωΐ = "morning, dawn, sunrise") means just after sunrise around 6 a.m., and so the Sanhedrin trial and the simultaneous Denial of Peter must have happened some time before c. 6 a.m.. All Gospels except Matthew also report that people outside the court building stood by a fire (to warm themselves), indicating a need for warmth (and light) at night when it was still dark and cold outside. That roosters generally crow around sunrise (sometimes before, sometimes after) is another indirect approximate indication of time.

I'm sure more complicated graphs are capable of visualising it more accurately, but as all Wikimedia graphs have been broken for months now, I don't think that's a viable alternative in the short to medium term. Besides, the source material from the Gospels does not give us more detailed information than timespans measured in units divisible by three. That would have been handy, but unfortunately no Gospel says, 'And Peter denied the Lord a second time at 5:27 a.m (IST).' It could be that some of the Gospel authors had their reasons for using 3-hour units as an indirect symbolic reference to the Trinity, but that's just a guess; at other times, the narratives do not seem to be particularly concerned with indicating the exact passage of time. In any event (pun intended), if you know a better way of displaying it, I'm open to suggestions. NLeeuw (talk) 11:12, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

Nederlandse: Thanks for making these edits. I have no issues as to the times of day of the events described, just how the timeline itself matches to (approximate) days and hours. The only change I would still recommend is an indication that point "1" refers to the midnight at the end of Wednesday/start of Thursday, which might otherwise be unclear. (Adding two more points at the start of the timeline to reflect Wednesday evening from 6 pm to midnight would also satisfy this point. But I understand that you might not want to do so since there are no events to report during that period, and for some Wikipedia users, the seven or eight events to be included the following day might wind up having to be squeezed into an even narrower space.) --Metropolitan90 (talk) 23:43, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

You're welcome! I think I'll leave it as it is for now. NLeeuw (talk) 21:51, 10 November 2023 (UTC)