5. THE DATE OF HEROD’S DEATH
One of the objections to a 33 AD crucifixion is that Jesus would have been older than what history seems to indicate. This is based on several factors. First, Jesus was no more than two-years old when Herod sent soldiers to Bethlehem to kill all the infants two years and younger, and Herod is generally thought to have died in 4 BC. This would imply a 5 BC or 6 BC date for the birth of Christ, making him 37 or 38 at the time of his death if he were crucified in 33 AD. This would make Christ nearer to 35 than 30 at the time he began ministering. Therefore one would have to take with considerable latitude Luke’s statement that Christ was “about 30 years old” when he began his ministry (Lk. 3:23). But another explanation seems more probable once we consider when it was that John the Baptist started his ministry.
Augustus reigned from 27 BC to 14 AD, during Jesus’ birth and early life.
We are told that John began to baptize “in the 15th year of Tiberius” (Lk. 3:1). Note that Luke, if he followed the same chronological methodology as Josephus, would have used accession year and Tishri to Tishri reckoning for rulers. Tiberius became official ruler on September 18, 14 AD, following Augustus’ death. In 33 AD this was about 3½ weeks before the beginning of the Jewish month Tishri, the beginning of the Jews’ civic year and thus by Jewish reckoning the beginning of Tiberius’ 1st regnal year. And so this would mean that John began his ministry somewhere between about October, 28 AD to October, 29 AD. Now, let us suppose John began his ministry when both the weather and water were warm enough to baptize the many who came to repent of their sins. This would suggest a late spring or summer, 29 AD inauguration of John’s ministry. Furthermore, some have calculated the time of John the Baptist’s birth based on John’s father’s family’s placement within the sequence of the numbered groups of the Levitical Priesthood, and speculated when Zacharias (John’s father) would have returned home from priestly service, where presumably shortly afterward his wife Elizabeth would have become pregnant with John, and thus calculated a mid-April or mid-May birth for John, making Christ’s birth of over five months later to fall between ca. mid-September to mid-November, based on Elizabeth being in “her sixth month” (Lk. 1:36) when Mary was told she would be overshadowed by the Spirit, to bear the Christ Child. But this calculation requires the assumption that the 24 priestly divisions always served during the same times of the year, which in the 1st century seems unlikely. Rick Larson of The Star of Bethlehem cites astrological evidence that Christ was born in June, 2 BC. At any rate, it is understandable why Herod in ca. early 1 BC would seek the death of any Bethlehem child two-years old and younger to cover any margin of error. And so, given the implication of John’s ministry beginning in the 15th year of Tiberius in Tishri 28/9 AD, a late spring, 2 BC birth of Jesus would make Christ about 29 when he was baptized, and about 30 the following spring, 29 AD, when he revisited John the Baptist (Lk. 3:23). In the gospel of John Jesus selects his first disciples, attends the wedding in Cana, and performs a miracle all shortly before the Passover (Jn. 2:13). Luke’s mention of “ministry” may perhaps refer to the spring following the year Jesus was baptized.
But despite the implication of dovetailing evidences, proponents for an earlier date for Herod’s death believe that Luke’s statement about Christ’s age should be taken with considerable latitude to account for Herod’s death in 4 BC. Yet, again, this would make Christ considerably older than 30 at the time his ministry began, even if we grant these proponents’ argument that Tiberius’ 15th year should be counted from his co-princeps, two years before his sole rule.
Josephus, author of The History of the Jews. He mentions Christ, and was a contemporary witness to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD.
Now, the date of Herod’s death is based on a lunar eclipse which Josephus mentions in connection with Herod’s last days. Josephus shows that Herod died after this eclipse but before the Passover which followed the eclipse. But the problem here is that in 4 BC the time between the eclipse and the Passover is only about one month,34 hardly enough time to allow for all the events which Josephus relates took place between the eclipse and Herod’s death. However, the eclipse of January 9, 1 BC allows for about three or four months35 for all the events Josephus mentions. This includes (1) Herod and his entourage taking a trip to hot springs near the Dead Sea, where presumably they spent extended time in a last-ditch hope that Herod’s sickness might be abated or healed; (2) followed by a visit to Jericho; (3) followed by an undertaking by Herod to send soldiers to arrest men from among families all over his kingdom, so that they might be killed upon news of his (Herod’s) death, so that there would be mourning in his kingdom; (4) the arrest, deportation, and imprisonment of Jews for this purpose, etc. Given, then: (1) the amount of time for the travel of Herod’s entourage; (2) a long enough stay at the hot springs to determine whether Herod would benefit from the experience; (3) Herod’s departure from the hot springs to Jericho, and then his sending out of soldiers; (4) the soldiers’ kingdom-wide effort in arresting Jews and bringing them back to a centralized location for imprisonment, all might conceivably be done in a month, but it seems quite doubtful. However, a nearly three or four month period would allow enough time for all these events to have taken place. Incidentally, the eclipse associated with the 4 BC date of Herod’s death was only partial, while the Jan 10, 1 BC eclipse was total.
Herod, by James Tissot.
Another criticism, and a surprising one, comes from Harold Hoehner, the professor who explained how the Jewish months of Chislev and a subsequent Nisan could have occurred in the same reigning year of Artaxerxes. Hoehner criticizes a later date for the eclipse, yet does so only through the evidence of secular history, extrapolating forward to show that a certain coin with a ruler’s image should not have been stamped 43 AD, since that ruler’s reign ended in 42 AD, etc. Yet, since Hoehner himself is known for explaining a conundrum about the 20th year of Artaxerxes in relation to, and in support of, the Daniel 9 prophecy, shouldn’t we expect an explanation from Hoehner about how a 5 or 6 BC birth of Christ would therefore have put Christ in his mid-30s at the time he began his ministry around the 15th year of Tiberius (since Hoehner believes Christ died in 33 AD), all but nullifying a physician’s statement that Christ was “about 30 years old”? Therefore I find Hoehner’s objection to a later death of Herod contradictory in relation to his acceptance of the Daniel 9 prophecy. For if one feels bound to accept with literalness an implicit biblical statement about a 360-day year 483 times over, it would seem incumbent upon that same thinker to take as literally as possible a physician’s statement about the age of a person at the time he entered ministry. But the point is, one can sooner imagine why a coin might be late-stamped by a year, than imagine all the events of Herod being squeezed into one month. [One side note here: B. Kanael has shown that dated coins expressed dejure, not de facto conditions, which is why the only dated coin, e.g., with Herod on it, marks his 3rd year from his Roman appointment, not from his rule in Palestine. The coin thus celebrates the most momentous event of Herod’s reign—his capture of Jerusalem. Even so, perhaps Hoehner’s objection may also be overcome depending on the reckoning method of the coiner, and the technical time of the ruler’s appointment.]
Now, it will surprise many Bible students to know how much ancient, historical dating depends on relatively sparse information. The lunar eclipse shortly before the death of Herod is the only eclipse of any kind Josephus mentions in all of his writings. The best defense of the 1 BC death of Herod is a 1966 article in Journal of Theological Studies (Oxford) by W. E. Filmer. Yet even Filmer says the problem of determining the year of Herod’s death is compounded by errors and ambiguities in Josephus. However, he points out that certain arguments thought to be conclusively in favor of the 4 BC date, such as the eclipse argument, are in fact “neutral.” Apparently, in part this is because it is conceivable (to some persons at least) that all the Herodian events Josephus relates could have happened between the eclipse and Herod’s death allegedly one month later. Filmer credits the objection to this view to F. Reiss in an 1880 work, Das Geburtsjahr Christi. Filmer himself stresses other factors, but also believes the 1 BC date for the death of Herod best fits the overall historical evidence. Again, and importantly, the eclipse associated with the 4 BC position was only partial, while the January 10 lunar eclipse associated with the 1 BC position was total, and therefore more natural for Josephus to mention.
The fact is, since the best arguments for a 1 BC death of Herod dovetail with all the relevant biblical evidence, the biblicist, at least—but I might hope any person considering these evidences—ought to strongly consider that a 33 AD crucifixion alone fulfills the prophecy of Daniel, while harmonizing the greater majority of ancient historical evidences.
The Roman emperor, Tiberius. In his 15th year John the Baptist began his ministry.
6. THE GREGORIAN AND JULIAN CALENDARS
The Julian calendar reflects the calendar change Julius Caesar made ca. 45 BC, in which a day was to be added once in every four years. Although between the years 44 BC and 8 AD there were errors and confusion in incorporating this change as Julius intended, there has been no confusion from 8 AD up to today about when leap years took place. (Note: The NASA chart used in this book assumes no missed leap years since the introduction of the Julian Calendar, a position I support.) This means we can extrapolate backwards from today to any date as far back as 8 AD and know with certainty what day of the week it was. (Implied in my view is that we can also go back to numerous points in history before 8 AD to see what day of the week it was.) However, readers here are advised to be careful how they use Julian Day Number calculators from online sites that promise to do all the figuring for them. Here is one I use which I have found trustworthy: [http://www.nr.com/julian.html]. Long story short, my brother and I went backwards from Thursday, October 4, 1582 AD, the last day before the Gregorian change that skipped 10 days in the calendar (though declaring the next day to be Friday), to figure what day of the week the 14th of Nisan would have been in 33 AD. The calculation resulted in Friday, Julian date of May 1, 33 AD.36 37
Finally, regarding a Friday crucifixion/Sunday resurrection, one must remember that the Scriptural way of defining “the third day” makes it sound to our Western ears as though three full days of 24-hours each are intended. But this was not the case in Jewish, biblical culture. That is, any part of the day was considered a “day” to the Jews of biblical times (as we shall see). So a burial of Christ’s body before sunset Friday, to his resurrection early Sunday morning, would be expressed as three days.
As for Christ making a simile between the duration of his burial to Jonah’s three-day and three-night stay in the belly of the great fish, this will be addressed later.
7. THE DAY AND HOUR OF SLAYING THE PASSOVER LAMB
The Passover was slain “between the evenings” on the 14th of Nisan, which works out to mid-afternoon, though this is not very plain from the English translation.
Secondly, Numbers 28:1-4 shows what is meant by a lamb sacrificed “between the evenings.” As Daniel Gregg explains, after quoting the biblical reference below:38
YLT [Young’s Literal Translation] Numbers 28: 1And Jehovah speaketh unto Moses, saying, 2Command the sons of Israel, and thou hast said unto them, My offering, My bread for My fire-offerings, My sweet fragrance, ye take heed to bring near to Me in its appointed season. 3And thou hast said to them, This [is] the fire-offering which ye bring near to Jehovah: two lambs, sons of a year, perfect ones, daily [to the day], a continual burnt-offering; 4the one lamb thou preparest in the morning, and the second lamb thou preparest between the evenings [settings];
“Two lambs” are offered “to the day” which is what the literal Hebrew says. The first lamb is not offered on one day in the morning, and then the second lamb on the next day after sunset. No. The two lambs are offered the same day to meet the requirement that “two lambs” are offered “to the day,” or “daily” YLT has it. The order of the lambs is also numbered, “one … in the morning,” “and the second … between the settings.” Both have to be offered the same day. Further, the order of the lambs shows that the first lamb is offered first in the first half of the day, and the second in the second half of the day. There is no dispute that morning means sometime between dawn and noon. The traditional time of the morning sacrifice was at the midpoint, which was the 3rd hour after dawn.
This leaves only the period between noon and the end of that day for the second sacrifice, which the text calls “between the settings.” It is not too hard to figure out that “between” means the midpoint between noon and the end of the day, making the second sacrifice exactly symmetrical to the first. Accordingly, the word “settings” is taken to refer to the point when the sun begins to decline, up to the point when its decline is no longer observed at the end of daylight, a period of time corresponding to “afternoon” in English.39
We in the west tend to think of only one “setting” in reference to the sun going down, but by “settings” the Hebrew Scripture seems to be dividing the decline of the sun into more than one part, thus, “settings.” And so the lamb was to be slain at the mid-point of the decline, or about 3:30 PM in the afternoon (discussion following), which parallels the time that Christ in the gospels is said to have died. The death of Christ in the afternoon of the 14th of Nisan in 33 AD would have allowed about 4 hours for his burial before the sabbath began (see endnote #39). So far as I can tell from the descriptions and contexts of how “evening” is defined in the Old Testament, it seems to correlate with when no part of the sun was above the horizon (or, on cloudy days, thought to be above the horizon)..Sunset, when the trailing edge of the sun is on the horizon line, would be a point of time observable to all, and was most likely defined by the Jews as the beginning of evening. (As for Gen. 1:5ff the terms “evening” and “morning” would seem to be the points of sunset and sunrise used to characterized the whole of the 12 hours which followed these points, respectively. Also, for Christ to have died at the end of the 9th hour and to have fulfilled the OT type of the lamb sacrificed “between the evenings,” Exodus 12:6 would have to mean the time from when the middle of the sun has just passed its apex, to sunset. In fact, Exodus 12 states that the sacrifice be killed between (Heb. beyn) the evenings, i.e. at the point midway between the apex of the sun and sunset, which is when Christ would die. Deuteronomy 6:16 is thought to indicate “at evening, in the going down of the sun.” This would seem to create a discrepancy. However, the phrase “in the going down of the sun” literally means “in the bringing down of the sun,” a process which runs from the apex of the sun to sunset, i.e. at the midpoint of the process, and thus corroborating Exodus 12:6. Any other explanation, such as one seen onlnine which claims the two evenings are sunset and a point 1 hour nad 20 minutes later, would mean Christ died at a time which fulfilled no Old Testament type. Again, as for the Exodus 12:6 lamb which was killed “between the evenings,” this means between the two points of when (1) the sun’s middle cleared the apex line of its travel and thus the sun was entirely in decline, and (2) sunset. Therefore the meal that Christ ate with his disciples the night before his death (though it was part of the same Hebrew day as the crucifixion, i.e., the 14th of Nisan) was a kind of Last Supper, not the official Passover Seder meal which the rest of the nation would partake of one day later when darkness began the 15th of Nisan. Exodus 12 tells us that Israel ate the first Passover at night. Even today the Jews eat the Passover meal on the 15th of Nisan. However, as will be noted shortly, there is reason to believe the Galileans began observing the ‘advent’ of Passover, so to speak, one day earlier, on the 13th of Nisan, and continuing their observance through the 15th of Nisan.
8. THE PROBLEM WITH JONAH’S 3 DAYS AND 3 NIGHTS
Now, a crucifixion in 33 AD would have meant a Friday crucifixion instead of one on Wednesday or Thursday. At first my brother in particular was much bothered by this conclusion. Like me he was familiar with Christ’s statement in Matthew 12:40:
An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and (Gr. kai) no sign shall be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonah. For [just] as Jonah was three days and (Gr. kai) three nights in the whale’s belly, so shall the Son of Man be three days and (Gr. kai) three nights in the heart of the earth.
At the time I first looked into this problem, my brother reasoned that Christ’s specific citation of three days and three nights implied a Wednesday crucifixion and a 72-hour period in which the body lay in the grave. In fact, David felt so strongly about it he remained skeptical that the year 33 AD was the necessary ‘bookend’ date closing out Daniel’s prophecy, until at length he was persuaded that the beginning bookend date—the historical date of the going forth of the commandment to restore and build Jerusalem (by Artaxerxes)—was as certain as history could be on such points. (This is because of (1) the Persian record of the assassination of their king, Xerxes, in August, 465 BC, and (2) an Elephantine record dated January 2, 444 BC showing Xerxes’ reign artificially extended into a 21st year along with Artaxerxes’ accession year. It is thought the Xerxes’ oldest son had a hand in killing him, but it was Xerxes’ younger son Artaxerxes who would prevail over his brother and gain the ascension. But the extension of Xerxes’ reign after his death shows that Tishri 1 had passed with no successor. Thus Tishri 1, 444 BC began the 1st regnal year of Artaxerxes.) Yet it wasn’t until my brother also considered that the wave offering of first-fruits [of barley] (Exod. 12) was observed on the 16th of Nisan, that his mind began to relax on the matter, realizing (a) Christ in the New Testament is said to be the first-fruits among the dead and thus is a type-fulfillment of the Old Testament’s first-fruits wave offering,40 and because (b) the significance of the first-fruits offering upon the 16th of Nisan,41 in relation to the lamb slain on the 14th of Nisan, is that it represents the Resurrection of Christ after his crucifixion by a period of two calendar days (Heb. “on the third day”).
Therefore, if we accept the working hypothesis that Christ died on a Friday in the spring of 33 AD, we should expect that his resurrection would fall on a Sunday. And in fact that is what the gospels tell us: “On the first day of the week…” And so Christ’s use of the sign of Jonah is not that 72 hours would have to pass until the Resurrection occurred, but that, by idiom of speech, after Messiah’s death, his burial would be of short duration.
However, skeptics not so friendly to Christianity have made much ado about Christ saying he would be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights like Jonah in the whale’s belly, and that a Friday crucifixion/Sunday resurrection shows Christ’s prophecy to be false. Therefore I urge a few considerations. First, again, Jewish expression allowed for any part of a day to be called an entire day. An example of this is from Esther 4—5, in which Esther tells her uncle, “Go, assemble all the Jews who are found in Susa, and fast for me; do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my maidens also will fast in the same way,” but then we are told, “Now it came about on the third day that Esther put on her royal robes and stood in the inner court of the king’s palace in front of the king’s rooms, and the king was sitting on his royal throne in the throne room, opposite the entrance to the palace.” Here we see that although “three days—night or day” are specified by Esther, she went in “on the third day.” This suggests an idiomatic equivalence between three days, night or day, and any part of three days, so long as the time is contiguous. Similarly in the KJV New Testament we have on the one hand Jesus saying in Mark 8:31 (NASB): “And He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after (Gr. meta, i.e. with) three days rise again,” yet, on the other hand, we have the statement of the men at the empty tomb to the terrified women: “Why do you seek the living One among the dead? He is not here, but He is risen. Remember how He spoke to you while He was still in Galilee, saying that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again” (NASB). However, in the former verse (Mk. 8:31) I believe the translation should have read: “…and be killed, and with three days rise again.” So both verses actually state the same thing. Likewise, on Resurrection Day one of the disciples on the way to Emmaus, who did not recognize the resurrected Lord, tells Jesus it was “the third day since these things [the betrayal/crucifixion of Jesus] have happened.”