What Day of the Week did Jesus Die?

First we want to look at what the Scripture says.

John 19:14-15a
14 Now it was the day of Preparation of the Passover. It was about the sixth hour. He said to the Jews, “Behold your King!” 15 They cried out, “Away with him, away with him, crucify him!”



The day of preparation means the day you prepare, generally for the Sabbath.  Why do you need to prepare?  Becase on the following day, you can do no work, so if you want to eat, you make all your meals a day ahead of time.  John is here speaking of the day Jesus was crucified.  Was the day after the Crucifixion a Sabbath?

John 19:31
31 Since it was the day of Preparation, and so that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken and that they might be taken away.

Again, we have the detail of the preparation, and we have them taking the bodies off the crosses "so that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath."   Couldn't they just take the bodies off tomorrow?  No, because obviously, tomorrow was the Sabbath.  But here, in 19:31, John gives us an extra detail:

"(for that Sabbath was a high day)"

Why mention this? Because not every Sabbath is a "high day."  there are some Sabbaths which are the weekly Sabbaths, and there are other Sabbaths which are "High Sabbaths."  What does the Scripture say?

Leviticus 23 designates seven days of the year as special Sabbaths, and these come to be called "High Sabbaths."

What's different about these Sabbaths?  They don't fall on a set day of the week.  For example,

Lev. 23:33-34
33 And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 34 “Speak to the people of Israel, saying, On the fifteenth day of this seventh month and for seven days is the Feast of Booths to the LORD.

That is, the Feast of Booths happens on a set day of the month.  Since the months do not always begin on the same day of the week, this and other High Sabbaths (which also have similar timings... a day of the month, rather than a day of the week) fall on different days of the week.

That means we can have a Sabbath day on a Wednesday or a Friday, or any other day of the week, and not on Saturday alone, during a Holy time.

John, in the verses above, tells us that Jesus was crucified on the day of preparation... the day before a Sabbath... and also that the following Sabbath was a "High Sabbath."

John 20:1
Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb.

Note, Mary didn't SEE Jesus be resurrected, she came after it had happened.   She came "on the first day of the week," and "while it was still dark."  That phrase is problematic, because we don't often get up before the sun.  Sunrise isn't like flipping a light switch... it's a gradual process.  So "while it was still dark" doesn't necessarily mean "before sunrise," it means before the sun had fully risen.

So, Jesus dies the day before a High Sabbath.  This isn't the weekly Sabbath.  Why not? Because John wouldn't have mentioned that it was a high Sabbath if it had also fallen on a weekly Sabbath.  He would have just said "The Sabbath."

And the women go to the tomb as soon as they possibly can to anoint the body for burial.  Why didn't they go before this?  Because both days were Sabbath days.

Now, lets assume that everything I've said above is wrong, and that Jesus was crucified on the day before the weekly Sabbath.  He would have been in the tomb

Friday NIGHT................ Saturday DAY
Saturday NIGHT..............and maybe part of Sunday day.

If we're exceptionally generous with the timing, we can suggest that he was in the tomb on Friday DAY, since they got Him buried before sundown, but that still gives us two days and two nights.

But Jesus said He would be in the tomb "three days and three nights."

Matthew 12:40
"For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth."  

Is this three FULL days and three FULL nights?

What does the scripture say?

Matthew 17:22-23
22 As they were gathering in Galilee, Jesus said to them, “The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men, 23 and they will kill him, and he will be raised on the third day.” And they were greatly distressed. 

So He will be raised ON the third day, not after it.  So we don't need to worry about three full days.

Let us suppose, then, that Friday was the High Sabbath (of Passover) and that Saturday was the weekly Sabbath.

That means Jesus would have been crucified on a Thurdsday.

That gets us
Thursday NIGHT........ Friday DAY
Friday NIGHT........Saturday DAY
Saturday NIGHT...... and part of Sunday DAY, since He was raised ON the third day.

The problem with the Christian church is that it reads that Jesus was crucified on the day before the Sabbath, and since we don't study the Old Testament, we don't realize that Saturday wasn't always the only Sabbath.  So we institute our "Good Friday" services and our "Easter Sunday" services and think that we can ignore the promise of three days and three nights.

If we understand our Old Testament, though, we see how the scripture lines up perfectly.

We don't have to look at what Jesus said in Matthew 12:40 and say "Oh, He didn't mean that, He meant something else."

Why Are All Persons of Equal Worth?

וַיִּבְרָ֨א אֱלֹהִ֤ים׀ אֶת־הָֽאָדָם֙ בְּצַלְמ֔וֹ בְּצֶ֥לֶם אֱלֹהִ֖ים בָּרָ֣א אֹת֑וֹ זָכָ֥ר וּנְקֵבָ֖ה בָּרָ֥א אֹתָֽם׃


      So God created man in his own image, 
      in the image of God he created him; 
      male and female he created them.

This is why people are all equal.  This is why every person on earth has sacred worth.  Because they are all made in the image of God.

What does it mean to be made in the image of God?  Since God is a spirit, and a spirit does not have flesh and bones, it cannot mean God's physical image.

We have a clue, however, in this:  No other animals in the creation story were made in the image of God.  Only people.  So what is the major difference between people and animals?

Moral agency.

When a new lion pack leader kills the cubs of the previous pack leader, even though they are still cubs, we do not hold him guilty of murder.

But if a man murders children, we do hold him guilty of murder.

The man has moral agency... he is morally responsible for his actions.

That is the Image of God.  What makes us human is that we are responsible.

Now, one theological objection to my premise might be this:  Adam and Eve were made in the image of God, but Cain and Able (and Seth, and all the rest) were made in the image of their parents.

But Genesis 9:6 makes a blanket statement:


      “Whoever sheds the blood of man, 
      by man shall his blood be shed, 
                  for God made man in his own image. 

Now, capital punishment issues aside, this verse makes a blanket statement, after the flood of Noah, regarding the worth of human beings, and giving a reason for it:  All humans are of the same worth because they are all made in the image of God.

One weak objection to this would be that it only speaks of "man," not woman.  But the Hebrew word there translated as "man" is "אָדָם" (adam) which refers to both men and women.  It is the same word used in Genesis 1:27 above, which calls both "male and female" by this word.

The important question here, then, is this:  If we jettison the Torah, if we jettison the "Image of God" concept, what basis do we have for declaring that all people are equal?  A word of warning:  Simply stating "All people are equal" is not an argument... it is a statement.  What is the foundation upon which it is made, if not God?