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The Time of the Crucifixion
Chronological
Issues in the Gospels

Dennis Bratcher

The time of day of Jesus' crucifixion is difficult to determine.
Mark's Gospel seems to give one time while the Gospel of John appears to
have a different chronology.  Such historical questions about the
Gospels are difficult to answer simply because the Gospels are not
intended to give that kind of historical information.  On one level,
it is entirely appropriate to maintain strongly that the Gospels are
historical in nature. That is, they are grounded in actual historical
events whether or not we have access to the details of those events.
Otherwise the Bible is little more than cosmic myth.  However, that
does not mean that the writers were trying to recount historical detail in
the same way that we in the 21st century Western world would expect
historical detail to be given, which is what creates a problem for us as
we ask historical questions.

This problem is compounded by the modern idea of absolute biblical
inerrancy, which contends that any feature of the biblical text no matter
how seemingly insignificant must be 100% accurate in all of its details in
order for any part of the Bible to be true. While many proponents of
biblical inerrancy want to deny it, that position grows out of a modern
scientific rationalism that will only affirm something to be “true” that
can be grounded in provable, or declared, “fact” (see The Modern Inerrancy
Debate).  However, the Bible simply will not yield to that kind
of rationalism, whether it is atheistic scientific rationalism or
Christian apologetic rationalism.

None of that makes the question of the timing of the crucifixion
irrelevant; it only means that there may not be a satisfactory
historical answer in Scripture, which is why the issue is
problematic and debated. One aspect of the problem lies in what is
known as the “Synoptic Problem.” This simply expresses the fact that
Matthew, Mark, and Luke (the “synoptic” Gospels) do not always agree on
various details of the Gospel tradition while at other times they match
word for word (see The
Gospels and The Synoptic Problem). The fact that John’s Gospel differs
significantly from the Synoptics in the chronology of Jesus’ life,
including even the day on which Jesus died, further complicates the
issue

Here is a short chart comparing the time references surrounding the
crucifixion in the Gospels:

Matthew

Mark

Luke

John

27:1 When morning came, all the chief
priests and the elders of the people conferred together against
Jesus in order to bring about his death.

15:1 As soon as it was morning, the
chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and
the whole council.

22:66 When day came, the assembly of
the elders of the people, both chief priests and scribes, gathered
together, and they brought him to their council.

18:28 Then they took Jesus from
Caiaphas to Pilate's headquarters. It was early in the
morning.

.

.

.

19:13 When Pilate heard these words,
he brought Jesus outside... 19:14 Now it was the day of Preparation
for the Passover; and it was about noon.

.

15:25 It was nine o'clock in the
morning when they crucified him.

.

.

27:45 From noon on, darkness came over
the whole land until three in the afternoon.

15:33 When it was noon, darkness came
over the whole land until three in the afternoon.

23:44 It was now about noon, and
darkness came over the whole land until three in the
afternoon,

.

27:46 And about three o'clock Jesus
cried with a loud voice, "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?" that is, "My
God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

15:34 At three o'clock Jesus cried out
with a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?" which means, "My
God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

.

.

27:57 When it was evening, there came
a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who was also a disciple of
Jesus.

15:42 When evening had come, and since
it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the
sabbath,

23:54 It was the day of Preparation,
and the sabbath was beginning.

19:31 Since it was the day of
Preparation,… 19:38 After these things, Joseph of
Arimathea,…

27:62 The next day, that is, after the
day of Preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered
before Pilate…

16:2 And very early on the first day
of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the
tomb.

24:1 But on the first day of the week,
at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they
had prepared.

20:1 Early on the first day of the
week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the
tomb...

A quick reading of this easily reveals that it is Mark and John that do
not agree. According to Mark, Jesus was crucified at nine o'clock in the
morning and died shortly after his so-called "cry of dereliction" at three
o'clock in the afternoon.  However, John's Gospel still has Jesus
before Pilate at noon, with no other time frame given for the actual
crucifixion.  All four accounts agree that Jesus was dead by evening
of that day.

There is virtually no way historically to reconcile these accounts
relating to the time of the crucifixion.  However, if we move beyond
presuppositions that want to force the Bible to speak to our modern
questions of absolute historical accuracy, we may have other ways to read
the text in light of how it was written and how it was intended to be
heard.

A careful study of the Gospels (which obviously we cannot do here) will
reveal that all of the Gospel writers arrange and order the material of
the Gospel traditions in order to emphasize different aspects of the
Gospel. Simply looking at the material that certain Gospels include
or leave out, even in the short references above, easily confirms
this. The writer of John’s Gospel even tells us that he is picking
and choosing material from the Gospel tradition that was available to him
in order to shape his Gospel for a certain purpose (John 20:30-31):

Now Jesus did many other signs in
the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But
these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the
Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in
his name.

Luke says nearly the same thing in a different way when he tells us
that he has carefully researched the traditions about Jesus (Luke
1:1-4):

Since many have undertaken to set down an
orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as
they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were
eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I too decided, after
investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an
orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know
the truth concerning the things about which you have been
instructed.

It is easy to assume from our perspective that “orderly” here mean
chronological order.  Again, a careful examination of Luke’s Gospel
compared to the other Gospels (as well as the second volume of Luke, the
book Acts, compared with the details of Paul’s life in his Epistles)
reveals that this is not the case. For Luke, “orderly” means organized in
such a way that the Gospel tradition becomes a faith confession to Jesus
as the Christ, which in turn provides a foundational theology for the
early church.

All this suggests that the purpose and organizing principle behind the
Gospels is not historical and chronological, but
theological. Another way to say this is that the historical
details serve the theological purposes of the writers. That does not mean
that they invented history. It only means that, contrary to our
scientifically conditioned perspective, the details were not as important
as the message.

So, for example,  In the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus and the disciples
ate Passover together the evening before the arrest in the Garden and Mark
tells us that Jesus was crucified at nine the following morning. Yet in
John's Gospel Jesus stands before Pilate at noon before Passover,
the very time when observant Jews would begin the preparations for
Passover by removing leaven from the house. John presents Jesus’ death
against the background of the Passover, with the crucifixion occurring at
about the time the Passover lambs were being killed in the Temple. When we
remember that the first Passover was the beginning of the Exodus event,
the defining revelation of God in Jewish history, John’s linking of the
crucifixion with Passover in this way becomes a powerful theological
affirmation of what God is doing in human history in these events. John’s
Gospel is not so much concerned with chronology as it is concerned with
helping us understand the significance of this event in light of God’s
revelation throughout Israel’s history.  He is, in fact, writing
theology, not history.

In their own ways, the other Gospel writers make similar use of various
details they include in the narrative. Again, the point here is not that
we must somehow make all the details fit according to our system of logic
and according to our assumptions of what is important. Nor does it force
us to conclude that since the details do not match according to our
criteria that none of the account is true. Rather, we must listen to what
each writer wants us to hear about Jesus and God’s act of redemption that
is unfolding in the Gospel stories. The writers are not just giving us the
facts; they have already processed the historical event into a faith
confession about the nature of God at work in Christ, and what this
historical event means for humanity and the church. It is to that
theological witness that we must listen rather than becoming bogged down
in trying to make the historical details fit. To miss the larger message,
to lose sight of the forest while looking at the trees, is to violate what
both Luke and John tell us is the purpose for the Gospels being written in
the first place.

-Dennis Bratcher, Copyright © 2004,
Dennis Bratcher, All Rights Reserved
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