When Did Jesus Die?

hi this is matt baker last christmas we did a video on when was jesus born well since today is good friday i thought i would do a follow-up video on when did jesus die and once again by when i mean both in what year and on what day now if you watch the video on jesus's birth you'll know that we were not able to come up with a definitive answer well let me once again tell you up front that there's not going to be a rock solid answer to this one either however this time we can get a bit more specific but before we get into it i want to tell you about today's sponsor ground news as someone who likes charts i instantly took a liking to this website and app basically ground news helps you escape your personal echo chamber by showing you how news stories are being covered across the political spectrum using ratings provided by independent news monitoring organizations ground news labels every source as being either left right or center and it also tells you how factual each article is you can even check the bias of any user on twitter and track your own reading preferences over time want to search the news by location or add topics you're interested in yup you can do that too so if you'd like to improve your critical thinking skills and avoid misinformation just click the link in the description or pinned comment to check out ground news right now okay let me begin by reminding you that virtually all historians even the most secular ones agree that jesus was in fact a real historical person now whether or not he was resurrected from the dead well that's another matter but that he lived and that he died these are general facts that very few scholars doubt and on top of this there are two very specific facts about his death that we can be extremely confident about the first is that he died by crucifixion a method of capital punishment commonly used by the romans at the time the second is that his death was ordered by a man named pontius pilate now there are several things that the four gospels disagree on but that jesus was sentenced to death by pontius pilate on this all four accounts agree we can therefore safely assume that this is because pilate was indeed the person who did the sentencing in fact this particular detail is also mentioned by the roman historian tacitus and by the jewish historian josephus now there is some controversy over whether josephus's testimonium is authentic or not but the consensus seems to be that some parts of it are probably original and that other parts were probably added later by christian editors the important point for us here is that if there was an original version of the testimonium the reference to pontius pilate was most likely part of that original okay so because we know that pontius pilate was the one who sentenced jesus to death this gives us a range of dates to use as a starting point because we know that pontius pilate was the governor of judea from 26 ce to 36 ce ce being equivalent to the term a.d so jesus had to have died sometime between those two dates okay so our next step is to try and narrow these dates down even further and fortunately we are able to do that let's start by looking at luke chapter 3 which tells the story about jesus being baptized by john the baptist just prior to starting his own ministry now other than the fact that jesus was crucified by order of pontius pilate the only other fact that virtually every historian universally agrees on with regards to jesus is that he was baptized by the person known as john the baptist now here's what the gospel of luke says about john the baptist in luke chapter 3 he starts with in the 15th year of the reign of emperor tiberius when pontius pilate was governor of judea and then he goes on to describe how john the baptist started baptizing people and that one of the people he baptized was jesus but the important thing for us is those first few words in the 15th year of the reign of emperor tiberius because this gives us a very specific time reference you see we know from roman records that tiberius began his reign as emperor in september of the year 14 ce which is the year that caesar augustus died therefore tiberius's 15th year as emperor would have begun in september of the year 28 ce so that's the earliest possible date for the beginning of john the baptist's ministry and therefore for the beginning of jesus's ministry if we assume that jesus's ministry lasted at least one year and that he died in the spring a fact that we'll come to in a moment that pushes his earliest possible death date to 30 ce now many biblical scholars believe that jesus's ministry actually lasted three and a half years so that would push us even further to 32 ce however it's also possible that tiberius counted his reign from two years earlier when augustus named him as his co-ruler and heir that would therefore bring us back to 30 ce so for now let's stick with 30 ce as the earliest possible date for jesus's death what about the other side of the range though can we push that date a bit more to the left well yes i think we can this time by using what we know about the apostle paul now paul who was arguably the most important leader of the early christian movement was not actually a disciple of jesus during jesus's lifetime he converted to christianity sometime after the death of jesus hold on to that thought while we take a look at acts chapter 18 verse 12 which says but when galio was proconsul of accia the jews made a united attack on paul and brought him before the tribunal so here we basically have the account of a court case that paul was involved in and it names the person who presided over the case galio the proconsul of accia now once again roman records come in handy here because from them we know that galio served as proconsul of accia in the year 51 ce and from paul's various letters we know that we have to account for at least 17 years between paul's conversion and this trial based on the statements that he made about his various travels it's possible to argue for more than 17 years but it's pretty difficult to argue for less than 17 years this means that the earliest possible date for paul's conversion is 34 ce and we know that paul spent at least some time persecuting christians before his conversion so that probably means that we can push the latest possible date for jesus's death to 33 ce so this gives us a pretty narrow range we can say with a fairly high degree of confidence that jesus died sometime between 30 ce and 33 ce let's now switch over to discussing the exact day that jesus died because this may actually help us narrow down the year as well now like i said earlier there are several things that the four gospels disagree on for example we get four different answers when it comes to how many women were at the tomb and three different answers about how many angels they met there however when it comes to the day on which jesus died all four gospels agree that it was on a friday the term used in all four cases is the day of preparation which every jew knows means the day prior to saturday the other thing that all four gospels agree on is that jesus died in the spring around the time of the jewish festival of pesach which in english is called the passover or the feast of unleavened bread pesach is a seven day festival and on the hebrew calendar it always begins on the 15th day of the month of nisan the most important event of the festival is the special meal known as the seder which occurs on the evening prior to day one this is because jews measure days from sunset to sunset so the meal is actually prepared on the 14th day of nissan but is eaten at sunset which marks the beginning of the 15th day of nissan basically pesach commemorates the story of the israelite people escaping from egypt where they had been held as slaves and interestingly this year pesach starts tonight so tonight is the night when jews around the world will be participating in the seder or passover meal but here's the thing although all four gospels agree that jesus died during pesach there is actually a slight disagreement on exactly which day of the festival he died according to john he died on the same evening as the passover seder however according to the synoptic gospels matthew mark and luke he died approximately 24 hours after the passover seder let's take a closer look in the gospel of john jesus has the meal with his disciples known as the last supper and then he is arrested that evening during the night he is brought before the high priest who is named caiaphas and then in the morning he is brought before pontius pilate note that in john 18 verse 28 it says then the jewish leaders took jesus from caiaphas to the palace of the roman governor by now it was early morning and to avoid ceremonial uncleanness they did not enter the palace because they wanted to be able to eat the passover so from this verse it's quite clear that the passover seder had not yet occurred in fact a bit later in chapter 19 verse 14 just before jesus is crucified it clearly says it was the day of preparation for the passover so in john jesus dies at the exact same moment that the passover lambs would have been being slaughtered for the seder meal which makes his death very symbolic something that i'm sure the author of john was aware of but in the synoptic gospels we get a different story i'll use the gospel of mark as an example in mark chapter 14 verse 12 it quite clearly says on the first day of the festival of unleavened bread when it was customary to sacrifice the passover lamb jesus's disciples asked him where do you want us to go and make preparations for you to eat the passover what follows is then the last supper but this time it's quite clear that the last supper meal was the passover seder meal which means that jesus's death which occurred approximately 24 hours later occurred on the day after the passover seder when the lambs had already been slaughtered to put it another way john has jesus dying on the 14th day of nisan just prior to the beginning of the 15th day but mark has jesus dying on the 15th day of nissan just prior to the beginning of the 16th day but in both cases he dies on a friday now there have been attempts to try and reconcile this discrepancy for example some argue that jesus chose to observe the seder a day early because he knew he was going to die others try to argue that there were actually two different calendars in use at the time and that jesus used one and the jewish leaders used another personally i don't think it's necessary to try and jump through hoops to make things line up perfectly after all like i've mentioned the gospels disagree about many other details as well my view is that the gospels are works of literature and that the authors cared more about their overall message than about the details in fact there are several clues that seem to indicate that jesus died on neither the 14th or the 15th of nissan basically both timelines seem much too short and overly simplified in those days passover preparations were very elaborate and often began weeks in advance but in the gospels we have pilate releasing a prisoner named barabbas in honor of the pesach festival either after the seder meal or just a few hours before it but from a jewish perspective this doesn't make any sense if such a custom did exist the whole point would have been to allow that prisoner to participate in the seder and that would have required several purification rituals that would have needed to start several days earlier so what's likely is that jesus probably did die on a friday sometime during the general pesach season which many people would have remembered however it seems that the gospel writers writing several decades later wove the story into the festival in a more specific way for theological reasons therefore my conclusion is that the closest thing we can say is that jesus died on a friday during pesach season sometime between the years 30 and 33 ce now there are those who try to get even more specific than this let me explain how they do it for some reason most scholars who try to nail down the details tend to lean towards john's account and hold that jesus died on the 14th day of nissan then they simply look for the years in which the 14th of nisan fell on a friday in ancient times hebrew months were based on when the new moon was observed from jerusalem so using astronomical data they come up with either the 7th of april 30 ce or the 3rd of april 33 ce those are the corresponding julian dates this is why jesus's death is usually given in most sources as being either 30 ce or 33 ce but rarely 31 or 32 however it's important to remember that in ancient times the hebrew calendar was not set in stone like i said it was based on literal observations which could actually be affected by the weather so for example if it was cloudy the new moon couldn't be observed so sometimes the start of the month was delayed since there's no way of knowing what the weather was like 2000 years ago there's actually no way of calculating exact hebrew dates either that's why i prefer to stick with these three facts only so that was a look at the question when did jesus die let us know in the comments which date you prefer to use and why thanks for watching [Music] [Music] you

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Length: 18min 2sec (1082 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 15 2022