Happy Passover!

[RevTestament]

Yes, I know it was yesterday. I spent the day off - the cold and wet weather helped....  I believe Friday was the Passover Sabbath of the NT, and that Yeshua was in the grave, ie spirit world for three days and three nights as He said. In other words he was physically killed late Thursday afternoon, and rose again before sunrise on Sunday. Happy Passover Sunday!! 

[Robert F. Smith]

One can find excruciatingly painful, long discussions of the chronology of Jesus' death and resurrection,  as for example here, https://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/questions/2198/how-is-it-that-jesus-could-be-three-days-and-three-nights-in-the-heart-of-the-e

But they miss the most important point which is whether the dating is inclusive or exclusive.  That aside from the Gospel accounts being written long after the event in a language which is foreign to Jesus and his apostles.  If Jesus is actually the Paschal Lamb of God, then he had to be offered up on Nisan 14.  Most scholars put that on a Friday, in order to jibe with John's Gospel.  But one cannot make John fit chronologically with the other Gospels.  The most widely accepted theory thus puts his death on a Friday, in either 30 or 33 A.D., neither of which fits the age of Jesus in the Book of Mormon, which insists on Jesus being 33 years and 3 days old at the time of his death.  Since he must have been born in Sept 5 BC at the latest, that means that he must have been killed at Passover 28 AD at the latest (having lost 6 months in the 360-day year count).  Regular Nisan 14 & 15 fell on Mar 30-31(Tue & Wed) that year, unless they did intercalation, in which case it would be April 28-29 (Wed & Thurs).  See Jack Finegan, Handbook of Biblical Chronology, 2nd ed. (Hendrickson, 1998), Table 179.  So the literal three days and three nights may indeed be correct.

[RevTestament]

6 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

One can find excruciatingly painful, long discussions of the chronology of Jesus' death and resurrection,  as for example here, https://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/questions/2198/how-is-it-that-jesus-could-be-three-days-and-three-nights-in-the-heart-of-the-e

But they miss the most important point which is whether the dating is inclusive or exclusive.  That aside from the Gospel accounts being written long after the event in a language which is foreign to Jesus and his apostles.  If Jesus is actually the Paschal Lamb of God, then he had to be offered up on Nisan 14.  Most scholars put that on a Friday, in order to jibe with John's Gospel.  But one cannot make John fit chronologically with the other Gospels.  The most widely accepted theory thus puts his death on a Friday, in either 30 or 33 A.D., neither of which fits the age of Jesus in the Book of Mormon, which insists on Jesus being 33 years and 3 days old at the time of his death.  Since he must have been born in Sept 5 BC at the latest, that means that he must have been killed at Passover 28 AD at the latest (having lost 6 months in the 360-day year count).  Regular Nisan 14 & 15 fell on Mar 30-31(Tue & Wed) that year, unless they did intercalation, in which case it would be April 28-29 (Wed & Thurs).  See Jack Finegan, Handbook of Biblical Chronology, 2nd ed. (Hendrickson, 1998), Table 179.  So the literal three days and three nights may indeed be correct.

Let's assume that He was crucified in 30 AD, which I may add does not do violence to Luke - unlike the later date and earlier dates. The passover that year fell on Fri rather than the Sat of 33 AD, so it is a perfect fit with a literal 3 days and 3 nights assuming He was crucified on Thursday. I have noted that the BoM gives us a timeline, but maybe you could explain to my poor feeble mind how you get 33 years and 3 days out of it. You have to be counting in long calendar years it seems. If those are converted to solar years, we end up with 32.5 years. That seems to present too many problems with the gospels, which seem to discuss 3 different passovers in Yeshua's ministry. For record keeping the Israelis seemed to use their leap lunar calendar system which makes it a pretty accurate record in comparison to solar calendars. I have only seen the use of the long count for prophetic reasons. That use doesn't seem to jibe with the BoM, which gives the record historically... just sayin.

Quote

If Jesus is actually the Paschal Lamb of God, then he had to be offered up on Nisan 14. 

I do not understand your conclusion that Yeshua had to offered up on Nisan 14. Several verses mention his crucifixion being on the preparation day. Of course the lambs were actually slaughtered on the 14th, but Christ is actually represented in the blood on the lintel of the door - He is the door....

Edited April 11, 2020 by RevTestament

[RevTestament]

I just finished listening to The Tabernacle Choir's performance of The Messiah. I really liked it for the Passover. So appropriate and timely. Someone needs to make a new composition for his birth day on Rosh Hoshanah. 

[Robert F. Smith]

3 hours ago, RevTestament said:

Let's assume that He was crucified in 30 AD, which I may add does not do violence to Luke - unlike the later date and earlier dates. The passover that year fell on Fri rather than the Sat of 33 AD, so it is a perfect fit with a literal 3 days and 3 nights assuming He was crucified on Thursday. I have noted that the BoM gives us a timeline, but maybe you could explain to my poor feeble mind how you get 33 years and 3 days out of it [3 Ne 8:5]. You have to be counting in long calendar years it seems. If those are converted to solar years, we end up with 32.5 years. That seems to present too many problems with the gospels, which seem to discuss 3 different passovers in Yeshua's ministry. For record keeping the Israelis seemed to use their leap lunar calendar system which makes it a pretty accurate record in comparison to solar calendars.

We have no actual records from the Jews for those years, even though we do have some Roman records (the Praetorship of Pontius Pilatus, etc.), so we can only reconstruct the actual Festival sequence through a lot of speculation and supposition.  Only the BofM has exact dates.  The Gospels do not speak with one, unified voice.  You need to read the sources I cited to see what the best scholars have concluded, insofar as possible.  Here are a couple of learned LDS sources:

"The New Testament account of the crucifixion of Christ would seem to indicate that the Savior was crucified the very week he became thirty-three years of age. The Book of Mormon not only substantiates this account, but also provides us with an exact date of the crucifixion. According to the Nephite calendar system, the Savior was crucified 'in the thirty and fourth year, in the first month, on the fourth day of the month.' (3 Nephi 8:5.) Although we are not certain when the first month of the Nephite calendar would occur, if the Nephites were using the same calendar system as the Hebrews, the first month would be in the spring of the year sometime between about the middle of March and the middle of April." (Daniel Ludlow, A Companion To Your Study of the Book of Mormon, 258-259)

"We find that the ancient Israelites on this continent had a sign given of the exact time of the crucifixion and a revelation of the exact time of the Savior's birth, and according to their reckoning, they made him thirty-three years and a little over three days old from the time of his birth to the time that he hung upon the cross." (Orson Pratt, Journal of Discourses, 13:127)

3 hours ago, RevTestament said:

I have only seen the use of the long count for prophetic reasons. That use doesn't seem to jibe with the BoM, which gives the record historically... just sayin. 

The Long Count was standard in all Mesoamerican dates.  It is in their books and on their stelae.  There was no other day-count for them.

3 hours ago, RevTestament said:

I do not understand your conclusion that Yeshua had to offered up on Nisan 14. Several verses mention his crucifixion being on the preparation day. Of course the lambs were actually slaughtered on the 14th, but Christ is actually represented in the blood on the lintel of the door - He is the door....

Jesus is the Paschal Lamb par excellence.  He is offered by the High Priest Caiaphas (Jn 11:50-51).  He is killed on Nisan 14.  The Last Supper was a formal Jewish seder.

[RevTestament]

On 4/11/2020 at 1:04 AM, Robert F. Smith said:

We have no actual records from the Jews for those years, even though we do have some Roman records (the Praetorship of Pontius Pilatus, etc.), so we can only reconstruct the actual Festival sequence through a lot of speculation and supposition.  Only the BofM has exact dates.  The Gospels do not speak with one, unified voice.  You need to read the sources I cited to see what the best scholars have concluded, insofar as possible.  Here are a couple of learned LDS sources:

"The New Testament account of the crucifixion of Christ would seem to indicate that the Savior was crucified the very week he became thirty-three years of age. The Book of Mormon not only substantiates this account, but also provides us with an exact date of the crucifixion. According to the Nephite calendar system, the Savior was crucified 'in the thirty and fourth year, in the first month, on the fourth day of the month.' (3 Nephi 8:5.) Although we are not certain when the first month of the Nephite calendar would occur, if the Nephites were using the same calendar system as the Hebrews, the first month would be in the spring of the year sometime between about the middle of March and the middle of April." (Daniel Ludlow, A Companion To Your Study of the Book of Mormon, 258-259)

"We find that the ancient Israelites on this continent had a sign given of the exact time of the crucifixion and a revelation of the exact time of the Savior's birth, and according to their reckoning, they made him thirty-three years and a little over three days old from the time of his birth to the time that he hung upon the cross." (Orson Pratt, Journal of Discourses, 13:127)

The Long Count was standard in all Mesoamerican dates.  It is in their books and on their stelae.  There was no other day-count for them.

It appears to me you want to have your cake and eat it too. The traditional calendar system referred to is the lunar Hebrew calendar with leap years - not the long count. So you give his age according to the traditional calendar, and then apply the long count to conclude when He died. That is an historical use, for which I find no uses of the long count in Jewish tradition. Maybe you know better than me?

On 4/11/2020 at 1:04 AM, Robert F. Smith said:

Jesus is the Paschal Lamb par excellence.  He is offered by the High Priest Caiaphas (Jn 11:50-51).  He is killed on Nisan 14.  The Last Supper was a formal Jewish seder.

The traditional Jewish seder is held on the eve of Nisan 15, but you say He was killed on Nisan 14. If there is no issue with holding the last supper earlier, I see no reason to doubt His crucifixion on the "preparation day" as noted by two different gospels, which I conclude was Nisan 13.

[Robert F. Smith]

13 hours ago, RevTestament said:

It appears to me you want to have your cake and eat it too. The traditional calendar system referred to is the lunar Hebrew calendar with leap years - not the long count. So you give his age according to the traditional calendar, and then apply the long count to conclude when He died. That is an historical use, for which I find no uses of the long count in Jewish tradition. Maybe you know better than me?

The Jews used a solar year.  That's why they used intercalated months to keep it in sync with the solar year.  The Babylonians likewise, which is where the Jews got their post-exilic months and dating system.  If we plug into the 600-year prophecy that solar year system, it just doesn't work.  If we apply the Muslim lunar calendar, that also doesn't work.  Only one system works, and it is the system applied in the only literate civilization in the Americas -- the Long Count of 360-day years.  John Sorenson came up with that correlation over 40 years ago.  If it doesn't work, perhaps you could tell me why not.  No other system works, unless you can come up with an answer that I haven't seen before, and you are welcome to do so.  Just do the math.

Just bear in mind that the Nephites were in the New World for a thousand years.  Plenty of time for them to have adopted the local calendar, just as the Jews did during the Babylonian exile.  The editor Mormon came in at the end of that millennium, and likely applied the best dating system he knew.

13 hours ago, RevTestament said:

The traditional Jewish seder is held on the eve of Nisan 15, but you say He was killed on Nisan 14. If there is no issue with holding the last supper earlier, I see no reason to doubt His crucifixion on the "preparation day" as noted by two different gospels, which I conclude was Nisan 13.

The Jews appear to have been using two different calendars then, allowing Jesus' to hold a seder and also to be the sacrificial lamb.  The scholar Annie Jaubert came up with that idea first (at least in modern times), and you can find it discussed in various sources:   Jaubert, The date of the Last Supper (Alba House, 1965).

You can read a discussion of her theory in Joseph J. Kavanagh, “The Date of the Last Supper,” Philippine Studies, 6/1 (March 1958):105-114, online at https://www.jstor.org/stable/42719358 .  That was based on her earlier publication of her theory in French.