Jesus’ Crucifixion – Nisan 14 in 30 AD or 33 AD?: A Robust Methodology to Determine Julian Dates in

[Yahudim]

I have been corresponding with Charles Murphey, an SMU alum, a believer, a seeker, a writer, a Geophysicist and the author of a very interesting book entitled,
Jesus’ Crucifixion – Nisan 14 in 30 AD or 33 AD?: A Robust Methodology to Determine Julian Dates in the Late Second Temple Period.

But establishing the date of the crucifiction is not the only benefit of his research. One of the most fascinating aspect of this book us gives the ability to determine a date/day-of-week correlation between the Roman and Jewish calendars during the time of the Messiah's ministry on earth.

Determining a DOW correlation to the Jewish calendar means knowing how to establish Yom Ha Bikkurim in any particular year and therefore the Omer; thus leading to an accurate method of reckoning the subsequent dates of the remaining Moedim. In my estimation, this is a huge benefit to the diligent seeker of His Word.

Considering the many knowledgeable Messianics here, I would not be surprised if a few could offer Charles Murphey scriptural, historical and contextual details that might augment his work.

You can support his efforts by purchasing the book.

Alternately you can read or download the free PDF here: Jesus’ Crucifixion – Nisan 14 in 30 AD or 33 AD?: A Robust Methodology to Determine Julian Dates in the Late Second Temple Period

 

[Humble Penny]

Well if we're talking about Julian dates then wouldn't we want to count from The Ides of March/March 15th when Julius Caesar died to March of 30 AD?

The only ancient sources I could find giving an exact pagan date for the Crucifixion of Christ place it at March 25th on the Kalends of April according to the ancient Roman reckoning. This places His death on a Friday.

However if one follows the plain reading of Genesis 1:14-19 and matches it up with the Dead Sea Scrolls Mishmarot A (4Q320) this is impossible, for Yeshua would actually have died on Tuesday March 21st following the Julian Calendar:

Add to or Subtract from a Date Calculator

If you count backwards from the 15th Year of Tiberius to the beginning of Augustus Caesar's 57 Year reign: this will land you in -42 BC at the beginning of the Second Triumvirate, and this is a span of 72 Years in the ancient Roman year 708 AUC.

 

[Yahudim]

Hi sis,
Did you by chance peruse the PDF to which I provided a link?

 

[Yahudim]

@Humble Penny

I surmise the reason that Charles Murphey, the author of the book, chose the word 'robust' for the title, was because his methods examined various ancient sources for confirmation, like calendars that coexisted in the same general time-frame from societies that had known influences on the Jewish calendar and culture.

Calendars, generally speaking, are based on algorithmic frameworks that correct for known differences in lunar and solar orbital behavior. In this fashion, they are static and only predict lunar/solar complexities in general terms. Then there is the 'Known Unknown'.

HaShem's creation is dynamic and complex beyond our comprehension. Planets both spin and orbit and their spin rates speed up and slow down. Likewise their orbits are not perfect circles and are affected by many things like gravitational influences originating from near and far or other physical events such as collisions.

Just like there is a sea level that rises and falls in cycles, there are complex patterns of waves that can mitigate, amplify and/or alter the complexity of the surface conditions. Any sailor upon the ocean is intimately aware of wind and wave action and it's unpredictable nature. But in a very general sense, we can predict tides or weather probabilities. Calendars are like that.

I hope this helps clarify my understanding of these matters.

 

[Christian Gedge]

I would not be surprised if a few could offer Charles Murphey scriptural, historical and contextual details that might augment his work.

I can offer my book, The Atonement Clock’ which touches much of the same subject. As for the date, I find it to be the 15th, Nisan, AD30.

 

[Yahudim]

I can offer my book, The Atonement Clock’ which touches much of the same subject. As for the date, I find it to be the 15th, Nisan, AD30.

The author, Charles Murphey, had published a new paper that he believes absolutely confirms the date. Hold on, I'll link the PDF.

Ah! Here we go... Year of Jesus’ Crucifixion identified by Weekdays during Two Festivals of Sukkot

 

[Christian Gedge]

He builds his argument on Jesus being at Sukkot in AD29. That’s dubious IMO. Nevertheless, I do agree with his crucifixion date in Nisan, AD30. But 14th? Why not 15th?

 

[Humble Penny]

Hi sis,
Did you by chance peruse the PDF to which I provided a link?

There's a major flaw in his argument:

"At the heart ofm any of the discussions was, “how can Jewish Calendar dates be reliably transformed to their Julian date
equivalents?”

This assumes the Jews were using the Julian Calendar, but he shows no proof for this was so outside of conjecture and speculation. Also seeing that he's arguing for the Julian Calendar instead of the Gregorian Calendar shows that he understands that a calendar cannot be used prior to the time of it's inception.

Anyone who is familiar with calendars on a basic level have at some point come across date converters bouncing between Gregorian and Julian Dates. What I find odd is that while dates prior to 1582 AD use Julian Years...it is simply assumed that Julian dates run prior to -42 BC. This is impossible for the historical records show that Julius Caesar abandoned the then in use Lunar Roman calendar created by Numa Pompilius, which was a revised version of the Lunar Calednar introduced by Romulus in -750 BC.

Furthermore, and to move away from Charles Murphy specifically, how do adherents to such a faulty belief justify that God commanded such a calendar or any man-made calendar to be followed over the one He created on Day 4? No one has even shown what calendar the ancient Hebrews were following when they first celebrated Passover during the Exodus.

 

[Yahudim]

He builds his argument on Jesus being at Sukkot in AD29. That’s dubious IMO. Nevertheless, I do agree with his crucifixion date in Nisan, AD30. But 14th? Why not 15th?

Brother Gedge, you do realize that Sukkot in AD29 occurs in the Fall and His murder was committed the following Spring, making the month of that horrific crime fall in NISON, AD30, right? ...and as to the 14th,

Exo 12:5 Your lamb shall be without defect, a male a year old. You shall take it from the sheep, or from the goats:
Exo 12:6 and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month; and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at evening.

Uh, prophecy?

For everyone's sake, I want to unpack the method used by Murphey so that we are all on the 'same page' with the author. So, from the linked PDF ( "Year of Jesus’ Crucifixion identified by Weekdays during Two Festivals of Sukkot") we have this portion of text describing his methodology:

It can be argued that the strongest method to confirm the actual year of the Crucifixion is to employ the “laddering” technique, where a consecutive timeline is built with documented incidents from the ministry of Jesus. In this way, we have a number of entries separated by defined passages of time, such that the accuracy of the entire timeline is reliant upon all of its successive episodes.

Here Murphey is setting a series of events in the recorded life of the Messiah as a baseline. The order and timing of these events is determined by the Jewish calendar as it was reckoned and observed in that era. Determining those factors informs the inception and chronology of those events.

When this internally-consistent timeline has even just one event which can be firmly fixed to a documented historical date,

Note: Historical dates are specific dates that can be resolved to dates, in the western hemisphere, of the modern Gregorian calendar.

then the entire timeline can be transformed into a dateline by subtracting and adding the time intervals between the cited entries.

Note: The ancient Jewish calendar in use during the time of Messiah had specific rules concerning the timing of the Feasts, so the timing of religious observances changed from year to year. This fact makes sequential years a larger multi-year timeline that therefore becomes unique in it's own right.

Obviously, if multiple incidents along the timeline can be reliably dated, then the accuracy of the dateline is increased. This is due to the fact that when calculating dates for undated events, the closer in time the undated event is from any historically-dated event, the less error there is in the newly assigned date.

When applying this logic to multi-year sequences, it greatly increases the probability of accuracy by eliminating individual years that may otherwise 'fit' into a shorter timeline. It should also be noted that Day Of Week data originates from the Jewish calendar based on the weekly sabbath. So once a correlation is established between the Jewish calendar used in the Second Temple period in the era of Messiah's life, that DOW information can be correlated to and verified by whatever calendar is being compared.

I hope this helps

EDIT: Submitted to me by the author, Murphey, "You have explained my methodology very, very well! The only, extremely minor clarification I can share with you is that I use the Julian Calendar (as do most academics writing about this time period) instead of the Gregorian Calendar. This point is “nit picky” as there are only about 2 days between the Julian and Gregorian dates in the first century AD - like the same day would be described as June 2 instead June 4, while, of course, both have the same weekday equivalent such that the two dates above would both yield, say, a “Wednesday.”"

 

[daq]

Brother Gedge, you do realize that Sukkot in AD29 occurs in the Fall and His murder was committed the following Spring, making the month of that horrific crime fall in NISON, AD30, right? ...and as to the 14th,Uh, prophecy?

For everyone's sake, I want to unpack the method used by Murphey so that we are all on the 'same page' with the author. So, from the linked PDF ( "Year of Jesus’ Crucifixion identified by Weekdays during Two Festivals of Sukkot") we have this portion of text describing his methodology:Here Murphey is setting a series of events in the recorded life of the Messiah as a baseline. The order and timing of these events is determined by the Jewish calendar as it was reckoned and observed in that era. Determining those factors informs the inception and chronology of those events.
Note: Historical dates are specific dates that can be resolved to dates, in the western hemisphere, of the modern Gregorian calendar.Note: The ancient Jewish calendar in use during the time of Messiah had specific rules concerning the timing of the Feasts, so the timing of religious observances changed from year to year. This fact makes sequential years a larger multi-year timeline that therefore becomes unique in it's own right.When applying this logic to multi-year sequences, it greatly increases the probability of accuracy by eliminating individual years that may otherwise 'fit' into a shorter timeline. It should also be noted that Day Of Week data originates from the Jewish calendar based on the weekly sabbath. So once a correlation is established between the Jewish calendar used in the Second Temple period in the era of Messiah's life, that DOW information can be correlated to and verified by whatever calendar is being compared.

I hope this helps

I've read some of the first link, which is quite a bit longer, and all of the second link. The choice of Sukkot for the feast of John 5 appears entirely arbitrary and yet he doesn't address the complication that decision presents for the Pesach of John 6. The Master stays in the Galil in John 6 and we all know what that means, right? Either someone has tinkered with the text, or he broke the commandment, or it is a Pesach Sheni and the author doesn't mention it because we are supposed to discover it by searching these things out and knowing the Torah.

If John 6 is a Pesach Sheni then he doesn't need to go up to Yerushalem because he would have done so at the primary Pesach, a month earlier, which would necessarily mean that John 5 is the Pesach and John 6 is Pesach Sheni a month later. If you say the feast of John 5 is Sukkot then the basis for this reasoning is much weakened if not destroyed.

 

[Yahudim]

There's a major flaw in his argument...

First, I owe you an apology as I misread your profile and referred to you as, 'Sis' in another post. It was an honest mistake harboring no ill intent and I ask for your forgiveness.

Second, I am going to ask that you read my response to Christian Gedge above, concerning the calendars used and the methodology employed by the author, Charles Murphey - before I respond to your post. I think it might be relevant and hope you enjoy it.

 

[Christian Gedge]

and as to the 14th,

Yes, to this day they kill the lamb late on the 14th between 3pm and 6pm approx. They eat it on the 15th after the day switches at twilight. So, getting back to Jesus and his disciples, they ate at full moon early on the 15th Nisan (6th April) and he was crucified the following morning - still 15 Nisan but now 7th April. Hope that helps.

 

[Humble Penny]

First, I owe you an apology as I misread your profile and referred to you as, 'Sis' in another post. It was an honest mistake harboring no ill intent and I ask for your forgiveness.

Second, I am going to ask that you read my response to Christian Gedge above, concerning the calendars used and the methodology employed by the author, Charles Murphey - before I respond to your post. I think it might be relevant and hope you enjoy it.

I have read the paper and it simply relies on many assumptions for it to be true. For one...if the solar year of 365.2422 Days is true then why would the Jews be using a Lunar calendar? And why don't we read any accounts of God or Yeshua rebuking them for using a faulty calendar?

And if we employ some common sense let's take the dates of creation according to all three traditions:

1. -5470 BC (Septuagint)
2. -4004 BC (Masoretic Text)
3. -3761 BC (Rabbinic Judaism)

5,470 Years + 1,582 Years = 7052 AM
4,004 Years + 1,582 Years = 5586 AM
3,761 Years + 1,582 Years = 5343 AM

Are we really to believe that God would be so clumsy and foolish so as to let His people use faulty calendars for this length of time when He knew the true length of the year and not say anything about it once?! And seeing that Yeshua was not shy, timid, or cowardly in calling out the hypocrisy of the religious leaders of His day...why do we not hear a single utterance from Him about this? It's because the Jews were not using any of these man made calendars.

Furthermore there's no evidence that the ancients had a concept of a "wandering" or "drifting year" prior to the Julian reform, and there's no archeological evidence to support the work of Meton or Callipus...if anything Aristophanes in his comedy The Birds derides and makes a mockery of Meton...as do the other Greeks of his day...how does one put trust in the supposed works of man when none of his works ever survived? On top of this none of the ancients ever used the supposed Metonic or Callipic Cycles. Instead there's ample evidence of the ancients using solar or luni-solar calendars with a base year of 360 Solar Days which they based off of the 360° Degrees in a circle and square. You'll actually be surprised to know that up until the 12th Century the ancient Norse people were following a solar calendar of 364 Days with 2 Seasons which corresponded to the long summer and winters in the North. The Meso-Americans had 18 Solar Months with 20 Days and 5 Epagomenal Days like the ancient Egyptians who had 12 Months of 30 Days with 5 Epagomenal Days placed at the end of the year in both systems.

Calendar system details aside...why would God actually be okay with celebrating His holy days with Months and days being named after pagan gods?

 

[Christian Gedge]

Are we really to believe that God would be so clumsy and foolish so as to let His people use faulty calendars for this length of time when He knew the true length of the year and not say anything about it once?!

There is nothing wrong with lunar calendars if a thirteenth month is added every so often. What is wrong, I believe, is how during the Greek era the calendar was compromised with Helenistic influences.

No, the intercalary month is not explicitly mentioned in scripture. However, it is alluded to in several luni-solar formulas - 1260, 1290, 1335, 42. The key to this is the division of the ‘week.’ Solar numbers and lunar numbers are laid down side by side. I have a paper on this called, Reconstruction of Pre-Metonic Hebrew calendar that you can Google and download if you want.

 

[Yahudim]

@Humble Penny

Forgive me for saying so, but your assumptions are in error. The Jewish calendar uses an intercalary method of adjustment to align lunar months with the solar year. Therefore it is a solar/lunar calendar. The same is true of the Babylonian calendar from which the Jewish people borrowed their month names.

Please consider, this is NOT about what the Jewish leadership SHOULD have done, vis a vis the Jewish calendar. It is about what actually DID happen during the era of Messiah's birth, life, death and resurrection.

Until you understand how these calendars operate, we will continue to talk at each other instead of to this topic.

According to the author, "In the region of the eastern Mediterranean and Levant, calendars were typically composed of 29 to 30-day, named months which are tied to individual lunar cycles, or lunations, as counted through a solar year marked by equinoxes and solstices; these are described as “lunisolar” calendars.
However, a recognized problem with these calendars was the fact that 12 lunar months, which each average to about 29.5 days, sum to about 354 days and so, fall short of the actual 365.2422-day solar year by about 11 days.

In order to account for this deficit and synchronize with the solar year, various calendars arose, both between societies and during the implementation of various evolutionary developments therein. It is fundamental to understand that the Babylonian lunisolar calendar was largely adopted by the Jews during their Babylonian captivity and then essentially continued to be used throughout the post-exilic era; even the Babylonian month-names replaced the old Canaanite month-names. This Babylonian-influenced Jewish Calendar likewise started each lunar month with the first sighting of the thin crescent, sometimes termed the “horned moon,” of the new moon at sunset, but as witnessed from Jerusalem instead of Babylon."

This description is representative of the majority of academics involved in this type of research. We need to eat the meat and spit out the bones...

 

[Yahudim]

There is nothing wrong with lunar calendars if a thirteenth month is added every so often. What is wrong, I believe, is how during the Greek era the calendar was compromised with Helenistic influences.

No, the intercalary month is not explicitly mentioned in scripture. However, it is alluded to in several luni-solar formulas - 1260, 1290, 1335, 42. The key to this is the division of the ‘week.’ Solar numbers and lunar numbers are laid down side by side. I have a paper on this called, Reconstruction of Pre-Metonic Hebrew calendar that you can Google and download if you want.

Exo_13:4 This day came ye out in the month Abib.

Exo_23:15 Thou shalt keep the feast of unleavened bread: (thou shalt eat unleavened bread seven days, as I commanded thee, in the time appointed of the month Abib; for in it thou camest out from Egypt: and none shall appear before me empty

Exo_34:18 The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep. Seven days thou shalt eat unleavened bread, as I commanded thee, in the time of the month Abib: for in the month Abib thou camest out from Egypt.

Deu_16:1 Observe the month of Abib, and keep the passover unto the LORD thy God: for in the month of Abib the LORD thy God brought thee forth out of Egypt by night.

Abib or Aviv is not just a month name. It is also a word that is descriptive of the condition, in both color and texture, of the winter grain crop of Barley. The mitzvah is implicit in the name of the month. This is why an intercalary month was added. It wasn't the month of Abib if the barley was not tender and a specific shade of green indicating it would ripen within 10-14 days, i.e., before Yom HaBikkurim (the prescribed Day of Firstfruits).

 

[Christian Gedge]

Abib or Aviv is not just a month name. It is also a word that is descriptive of the condition, in both color and texture, of the winter grain crop of Barley. The mitzvah is implicit in the name of the month. This is why an intercalary month was added. It wasn't the month of Abib if the barley was not tender and a specific shade of green

Good point, and adequate for farmers and worshipers alike.

However, there was a background astronomical system of precision operating too. Here is my link. Pre-Metonic Hebrew Calendar Can you bring it to the attention of brother Murphey?

 

[Humble Penny]

@Humble Penny

Forgive me for saying so, but your assumptions are in error. The Jewish calendar uses an intercalary method of adjustment to align lunar months with the solar year. Therefore it is a solar/lunar calendar. The same is true of the Babylonian calendar from which the Jewish people borrowed their month names.

Please consider, this is NOT about what the Jewish leadership SHOULD have done, vis a vis the Jewish calendar. It is about what actually DID happen during the era of Messiah's birth, life, death and resurrection.

Until you understand how these calendars operate, we will continue to talk at each other instead of to this topic.

According to the author, "In the region of the eastern Mediterranean and Levant, calendars were typically composed of 29 to 30-day, named months which are tied to individual lunar cycles, or lunations, as counted through a solar year marked by equinoxes and solstices; these are described as “lunisolar” calendars.
However, a recognized problem with these calendars was the fact that 12 lunar months, which each average to about 29.5 days, sum to about 354 days and so, fall short of the actual 365.2422-day solar year by about 11 days.

In order to account for this deficit and synchronize with the solar year, various calendars arose, both between societies and during the implementation of various evolutionary developments therein. It is fundamental to understand that the Babylonian lunisolar calendar was largely adopted by the Jews during their Babylonian captivity and then essentially continued to be used throughout the post-exilic era; even the Babylonian month-names replaced the old Canaanite month-names. This Babylonian-influenced Jewish Calendar likewise started each lunar month with the first sighting of the thin crescent, sometimes termed the “horned moon,” of the new moon at sunset, but as witnessed from Jerusalem instead of Babylon."

This description is representative of the majority of academics involved in this type of research. We need to eat the meat and spit out the bones...

And when you look at Scripture you'll see that none of the Canaanite names crept in until after the Exodus...and the first instance we read of them are in 1 Kings 6:1; and it's not until after the Babylonian captivity that we see Babylonian names being used. Prior to the Exodus there are no month or day names ever...yet the Mr. Murphey seems to wholly ignore this plain fact!

That said one must show what calendar system was actually being used when Moses recorded the dates for the Flood in the story of Noah. I can tell you it was not any man made calendar that's for sure...and seeing that none of the nations existed on the day Adam was created...why is no one examining what calendar Adam was following? There are no nations until after the Flood and the Tower of Babel incident.

 

[Humble Penny]

This link from Wikipedia shows that prior to the creation of the Masoretic Text no one was using a -4004 BC date for creation:

Dating creation - Wikipedia.

You'll see under the tab Abrahamic religions that the early church only knew of 5,500 Years from Adam to Christ. It wouldn't be until 160 AD that the Jews corrupted the text and gave birth to the Seder Olam...which I might add is the source text for the Masoretic Text; and it wouldn't be until the 7th-10th Centuries AD that the Jewish group known as the Masoretes began spreading the Masoretic Text. Otherwise the early Church from the 1st Century AD and we'll into the Middle Ages were using the Septuagint for their date of creation.

In similar fashion prior to 525 AD no one was using the Anno Domini system for their dates...but why? Because it never existed! And not once in any ancient documents from the classical period, or the Bible do you read of BC/AD dates:

Since this is so you can't use any man-made calendars to track dates prior to the time of their inception.

 

[Yahudim]

This evidently bears repeating:

Please consider, this is NOT about what the Jewish leadership SHOULD have done, vis a vis the Jewish calendar. It is about what actually DID happen during the era of Messiah's birth, life, death and resurrection.

It is only through the calendars in use at the time of Messiah's ministry that we are able to link the events of His ministry to a modern calendar system. It is only through a modern calendar system that we can link historically verified events to said events in scripture. We are working toward 'synchronizing our watches', but in terms of calendars; this by verifying the same events that occur on different calendar system and in such a way that may yield a measurable link between them.

For instance, if two or more diverse cultures records the date of an event (a feast, an eclipse, a comet, a battle, an earthquake, etc.) on two different calendar systems, then the date of that event will link those calendars. If one or more of those calendars can be linked to a modern calendar system by any means, then all of them can be synchronized to the modern method of measuring dates!

This development is very important to the author's stated goal, because it gives us a scale of measure that can be applied across multiple calendars. Adding any event in the ministry of Messiah to this process establishes a mathematical relationship to the Jewish calendar too. It provides us with a point of reference related to multiple calendars. Then, when any one of them can be linked to a modern calendar, the all calendars become linked. That is the goal here.

Please, please, please!

We are NOT discussing theology here or the traditions of men or which calendar is better. We are doing math! Do you understand?

Societies and civilizations measure time by different methods. Counting days and weeks and months and years is of no use to us if we do not have a means of rectifying one calendar with another.

The 23rd day of Farbelouso in the year of Calabarinski - doesn't give us anything! We are investigate methods of measuring events with an eye towards finding where and how these date measuring systems intersect - mathematically.

The OP is clear. Please try to stay on point. If your post isn't about how to recognize or achieve this end, then your post isn't relevant to this OP.