Was Jesus Crucified on a Wednesday?

Dear Apologist, my friend claims Jesus was really crucified on a Wednesday and the commemoration of Good Friday is an evil Catholic conspiracy .  Where is that coming from?



Let’s begin by looking at how we know Jesus died on Friday.  Each Gospel says Jesus was killed on the “day of preparation for the Sabbath”.  The Sabbath is on Saturday, so the “day of preparation” was Friday.  Now, Scripture also says Jesus was raised “on the first day of the week”, namely Sunday (Lk 24:1).

Thus, when we say Jesus was raised “on the third day”, we are counting days in the ancient Hebraic way.  They counted the first day in a sequence as day one.  That means Saturday was the second day and Sunday was the third.

Now, your friend is among those who have recently begun misunderstanding how long Jesus spent in the tomb.  They agree that Jesus rose on the first day of the week.  However, then they focus on Matthew 12:40, in which Jesus says, “The Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the earth.”  They count backwards, taking Jesus’ words completely literally, and end up on Wednesday.

And what do they do with the passages which say Jesus was killed on the “day of preparation”?  They propose there must have been an extra Sabbath on Thursday.

They key to resolving this confusion is to ask,

“If you are correct, what were the women doing on Friday?”  

You see, Scripture makes it clear the women came to anoint Jesus at the earliest opportunity after the Sabbath, which was Sunday.  This is made clear when we read Luke 23:52-56:

"[Joseph] went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then he took it down, wrapped it in a linen cloth, and laid it in a rock-hewn tomb where no one had ever been laid. It was the day of Preparation, and the Sabbath was beginning. 

The women who had come with him from Galilee followed, and they saw the tomb and how his body was laid. Then they returned, and prepared spices and ointments.
 But they rested on the Sabbath in obedience to the commandment."

And then Matthew 28:1

"After the Sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb."

But if your friend is correct, it would mean they had an earlier opportunity on Friday... and they didn't visit.  Why wait?

Well, they didn’t wait.  Your friend is simply misinterpreting Jesus’ saying about “three days and three nights”.  It was merely an idiom for “three days”.

And when you apply the Hebraic way of counting days, everything fits together once more.