Do the Gospels Give Contradictory Dates for the Crucifixion of Jesus? Skeptics of the New Testament’s reliability sometimes make the assertion that the gospel of John gives a different date for the crucifixion of Jesus than the Synoptic gospels – Matthew, Mark and Luke. This position has been championed by prominent agnostic New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman as substance for his own skepticism. Let’s begin with a look at the testimony of the Synoptic gospels. Matthew, Mark and Luke are in agreement that Jesus sent Peter and John to make preparation for eating the Passover meal on the first day of unleavened bread. The first day of unleavened bread was the first day of the Passover week. Recall that the Torah prescribed that the Passover would be a week-long celebration. Before we go any further, it’s important to point out the Jewish context of the gospel accounts. In the Jewish calendar, a day began at sunset (rather than at midnight as we observe today). With this in mind, let’s now examine John’s testimony. John begins his account of the passion of Jesus in John 13:1 where he states, “…before the Feast of the Passover…” This verse begins the story of how Jesus washed his disciples’ feet at the last supper. Ehrman and others point to this verse to assert that the date John is recalling is the day before the start of the Passover week. However, this is not what the text says. All that is required by the text is that we acknowledge the setting as prior to the inaugural meal of the Passover week, hence John’s use of the phrase, “Feast of the Passover.” This is substantiated by John’s acknowledgment of Jesus performing various acts during the supper in the very next verses. Further, the context of the supper described in John 13 is the same as the last supper in the Synoptics, as all of the gospels record this meal as the one where Jesus predicts His betrayal. Thus, all of the gospels are in agreement that the last supper took place as the inaugural Passover meal. This means that the episodes of Jesus’ passion following the last supper occurred on the second day of the Passover week. Moving into John 18, John records in verse 28 that, following His trial before the Sanhedrin, the Jews… “…led Jesus from Caiaphas into the Praetorium, and it was early; and they themselves did not enter into the Praetorium so that they would not be defiled, but might eat the Passover.” (John 18:28) The assertion of Ehrman and others who maintain a contradiction between the gospel authors is that John’s reference to the Passover in this verse is to the inaugural meal. However, this assertion is not a mandatory reading of the text, since Passover took place over a whole week. Given that the context of the supper described in John 13 is the same as the last supper described in the Synoptics, we have more reason to believe that John is here speaking of the second day of the Passover week. Later that same day, at the conclusion of Jesus’ trial before Pilate, John records in John 19:14, “it was the day of preparation for the Passover…” The assertion of Ehrman et al. here is that, “the day of preparation for the Passover” should be understood as during the day before the inaugural Passover meal. The word here translated as, “day of preparation,” is παρασκευή. This same word is used, to this day, in the Greek language, as the word for Friday. παρασκευή is not to be understood as during the day before the inaugural Passover meal; it is a reference to the Friday of the Passover week. This understanding is confirmed in Mark 15:42 where he describes the day of Jesus’ crucifixion (παρασκευή) as, “…the preparation day, that is, the day before the Sabbath…” When we look at the entirety of the gospel accounts, we see that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all record Jesus’ crucifixion as having taken place on the Friday of Passover week. But, what about the time of the crucifixion? The Synoptics are unanimous in stating that Jesus was crucified between the sixth and ninth hours of the day. However, John records that Jesus’ trial with Pilate took place at the sixth hour of the day. Matthew, Mark and Luke all use a Jewish system, where the first hour of the day corresponds with dawn (roughly 6:00am). This would make their references to the sixth to ninth hours as noon–3:00pm. In contrast, John is using a Roman system, wherein the first hour corresponds to midnight. This makes his reference to Jesus’ trial at the sixth hour as taking place at 6:00am, with his crucifixion, death and burial following later in the day. Rather than observing a discrepancy, we see that the gospel accounts, again, are in agreement in their testimony; Jesus was tried in the morning and crucified in the afternoon. Though a surface-level reading of the New Testament could be construed to support the idea that the gospels are contradictory accounts, a contextual examination of what they record simply doesn’t support these assertions.