Jesus’ anguish on a Friday may be miscalculated but what matters is its undeniable fulfillment of profound love

Taken from the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus offered the Lord’s Supper "on the first day of unleavened bread, when they sacrificed the Passover lamb" (Mark 14:12; Matthew 26:17; Luke 22:7), which means that Jesus said the first Mass on Thursday, the fourteenth of Nisan. This was "the day of preparation" for the Passover when the lambs were slaughtered and the meal prepared to be taken in the evening (Exodus 12:6). On the other hand, John says that Jesus was crucified on the "day of preparation" (John 19:31) which would seem to fall on a Friday, the fourteenth of Nisan, the day of preparation. Saturday would then have been both the Sabbath and the Passover. Is there a disagreement here? Let’s find out.

Dionysius_Exiguus, a monk who died in A.D. 556, was the man who established our Lord’s birth as the year 753; year calculated from the year Rome was founded. He made the following year, 754, A.D, 1, etcetera. Consequently the system of dating that has been used by most of the world for more than two thousand years now originated from him.

One of Dionysius's efforts to bring back together the divided Church related to the computation of the dates of Easter, the most significant Christian feast day, on which advocates celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. This date was one of much disputation in the early Church, and was one cause of the split between the eastern and western branches of the Church. Two methods competed for superiority at the time; the Alexandrine rule created by the Council of Nicaea in 325 and the other used by the Church authorities in Rome at the time of Dionysius, proclaimed that Easter must fall between March 25 and April 21 and based on an  84-year cycle.

With the above-mentioned information, it has been found that Dionysius is outstandingly precise in his calculation, who was off only about six years. Flavius Josephus disclosed in both The Jewish War and in Jewish Antiquities that King Herod died in 750. If Jesus was born "in the days of Herod the King" (Matthew 2:1)

then he had to be born before 750. This pulls Jesus’ birth back at least three years from the traditional date established by Dionysius. Given that Herod commanded the killing of all male children under the age of two (Matthew 2:16), Jesus was born approximately a year before this order. And because Herod had to be filled of beans to issue such command, this pulls Jesus’ birth back at least to about 748 or 749. Moreover, Josephus narrated that Herod became sick shortly after this episode and traveled to Jericho (a warmer climate) to heal, where he breathed his last six months later. This pulls our Lord’s birth back still further. Add these factors together, Dionysius’ calendar was off about six years, which means that Christ would have been born about 747 or 748 (5 or 6 B.C.).

Luke 3:23 discloses that Jesus was baptized by John and started His ministry at "about the age of thirty." Luke 3:1-2 is more precise when it says John the Baptist started to preach: In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the desert. 

Not much time seems to pass between John’s beginning to preach and his baptism of Jesus. This was John’s mission - to "prepare the way of the Lord" as (Luke 1:76) says. If John baptized Christ in the same year He began preaching, that would have been 780 (A.D. 27) because Tiberius was made Caesar to rule the eastern provinces under the reign of Augustus, which began in 765. Jesus, then, would have been about 32 or 33 when he began his public ministry.

The presence of all of the men pointed out in Luke’s Gospel can be validated from historical records, but the mention of Pontius Pilate is most usefull as he became procurator in Judea in A.D. 26. Jesus could not, thus, have begun His ministry prior to A.D. 26.

Further, when Jesus cast the moneychangers out of the temple in John 2, he said, "Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up again" (John 2:19). The Jews told Jesus it took "forty-six years" to build the temple. They spoke as if the temple was finished. According to Jewish Antiquities of Josephus, the temple did take forty-six years to build and that it was finished around A.D. 25-26. This fact retells what have witnessed so far, that Jesus most likely started His public ministry in A.D. 27 at about 32 or 33 years of age.

John’s Gospel narrates that Jesus’ ministry lasted either two years and three months or, more likely, three years and three months. Jesus’ traditional month of baptism is January. That is why the three months are added from January until April (when Jesus was crucified). The three years are figured out by adding up the Passovers during Christ’s ministry. (John 2:13, John 6:4, and John 13:1 clearly account three Passovers during Jesus’ ministry. John 5:1 refers to "a feast day of the Jews," but it does not say Passover. So there is some query as to whether Jesus’ ministry was two or three years in extent. Three years seems most probable.

Having determined this, the Jewish calendar could give that in A.D. 30, Passover fell on Friday which affirms that Jesus’ ministry was three years in length, which means that the fourteenth of Nisan would have been Thursday. This would have been the day of preparation when the lamb was slaughtered and the Passover meal taken in the evening. The Jewish people counted their days beginning the evening of the previous day. The actual day of Passover is the fifteenth of Nisan. The only other year near A.D. 30 that Passover would have taken place on Friday was A.D. 33. Some do maintain that this was the year our Lord was crucified, but it does not match with other facts as well. So it can be fairly accurate that our Lord was crucified in A.D. 30.

If our Lord died on a Friday(Matthew 27:62, Mark 15;42, Luke 23:54, and John 19:31) making its occurrence in the month of Nisan (April) because it was the time of Passover, then why is it that in the synoptic Gospels does Jesus celebrate the Passover on Thursday night (considering that Passover fell on a Friday in that year, this would be expected), but in the Gospel of John, Friday is "the day of preparation"? According to John, Passover fell on Saturday, which is why he refers to it as a "great Sabbath day" (John 19:31). It was not only the Sabbath, but it was Passover likewise.

According to The Navarre Study Bible, in Mark’s Gospel the Pharisees and Sadducees had a dissimilar way of observing feast days. The Pharisees were faithful in their celebration. If the fifteenth of Nisan fell on Friday, then that would be the day they commemorated the Passover. On the other hand, the Sadducees were more free-thinking and had no problem with moving a feast day in particular situations. This practice is similar to the present modern practice of moving some feast days to Sunday when they actually happen during the week (as is commonly observed with the feast of the Epiphany). It could also be compared to the bishops proclaiming a holy day not obligatory because of the day upon which it falls. For instance, if a holy day falls on a Friday, the bishops sometimes dispense Catholics from the obligation of attending Mass on that particular holy day for that year.

This means that when Jesus actually celebrated the Passover, He did it in the traditional way of the Pharisees which is evident in the synoptic Gospels. With the Pharisees, Jesus kept the Passover faithfully in harmony with what Moses said in Exodus 12. Nevertheless, when John wrote concerning Christ’s passion, he did not highlight on the Lord’s Supper that the synoptic Gospel writers did. He did not mention the Lord’s Supper at all as a matter of fact. He underscored the crucifixion. Only in passing, as he illustrated the activity of the day, did John mention that it was "the day of preparation." John was not narrating of the practice of Jesus and the apostles; he was telling of the practice of the Sadducees, who had a huge number of priests in their camp and great influence in the culture at the time. This fact clarifies why John calls Friday the "day of preparation" instead of Thursday. The Sadducees, who moved the Passover to Saturday, commemorated the day of preparation on Friday instead Thursday as Jesus and the apostles did.

Jesus Agreeing with Pharisees would be strange as most people would agree that Jesus was very fast to rectify both Sadducees and Pharisees in His teaching. In fact, He illustrated them both to be in need of a deeper knowledge of marriage when the question concerned divorce and remarriage (Matthew 19:3-9). The Pharisees believed that only in particular cases, such as adultery, could one divorce, while the Sadducees would allow divorce for just about anything. Though the Pharisees were closer to the truth, Jesus exhorted all involved to a deeper knowledge when He elevated marriage to the level of a sacrament and pronounced, " what God has joined together, no human being must separate." (Matthew 19:6).

However, when Jesus talked about the communion of Saints (Luke 20:27-39),  He concurred with the position of the Pharisees. It’s interesting to note that the Sadducees did not believe in the Resurrection, or in angels, or in the reality of spirit at all (Luke 20:27) (Acts 23;8). Likewise they believed only in the first five books of the Old Testament, the Torah. In Luke 20, a group of these same Sadducees thought they would embarrass both Jesus and the Pharisees at the same time by using a story from (Tobit 3:7) against Jesus. They were going to "prove" that either there was serious miscalculation in Tobit and thus, Jesus and the Pharisees would be erroneous about its divine origin; or, if Tobit were to be acknowledged as real, then the resurrection could not be real. Hence, Jesus and the Pharisees would be incorrect about a matter they considered indispensable to the genuine faith.

The Sadducees cunningly used a "hypothetical" woman - in reality referring to Sarah from Tobit 3 and said:

Now there were seven brothers; the first married a woman but died childless. Then the second and the third married her, and likewise all the seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. Now at the resurrection whose wife will that woman be? For all seven had been married to her." (Luke 20:29-33) 

Jesus, the apostles, and any Pharisee listening would have straight away thought of  Sarah’s story, who is portrayed in Tobit 3 as having had seven husbands, all of whom were brothers, each murdered by the demon Asmodeus when they tied the knot with her, and before Sarah could conceive a child. In short, each of these seven brothers "died childless." This story may seem bizarre to this generation, but in keeping with the law of the Torah (Deuteronomy 25:5), each of these brothers was actually perfoming his responsibility as a faithful Jew. The law said that if a man, as was the case here, were to die without having "raised up seed," his brothers would have the accountability to guarantee that one of them in fact "raised up seed" in his name.

The Sadducees’ scheme was almost great. They knew that polyandry was forbidden by God in Scripture. If all of these brothers had Sarah as wife, whose wife would she be in the professed afterlife? The Sadducees undoubtedly asked the question with a smirk on their faces which would certainly stump and surprised our Lord and the Pharisees.

Jesus responded categorically in  Luke 20:34-38 explaining that marriage has to be a sacrament for this life, not the next. In other words, Sarah would not belong to any of these brothers because marriage is "until death do us part" as we’re aware of its vow. And Jesus didn’t stop there but explained further that those who die in Christ are not dead but are alive, "for all live to him" (verse 38). Jesus here evidently sided with the Pharisees, and in turn the Pharisees replied to Jesus, "Teacher, you have answered well" (verse 39).

So it should not blown us up that Jesus lived liturgically in harmony with the Pharisees rather than the Sadducees pertaining to the Passover. After all, Jesus Himself recognized that the Pharisees and scribes who sit "in the chair of Moses" must be followed. It was not that Jesus inclined to side with the "more conservative" Pharisees over the Sadducees. Jesus merely paid attention to the reasonable authority that He, as God, had instituted in Israel. At the same time, Jesus was quick to reproach the "traditions of men" of either the Pharisees or the Sadducees in the course of bringing the fullness of God’s revelation to the humanity.