The Crucifixion

The event

Roman soldiers lead Jesus, already scourged, to Golgotha ("the place of a skull"), just outside Jerusalem's walls, where they crucify him between two criminals around the third hour of the day. Above his head they nail a sign reading "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews," meant as mockery but proclaiming, unwittingly, the very truth Pilate refused to change even when the chief priests objected. Soldiers gamble for his clothing beneath the cross, fulfilling Psalm 22's ancient description of a suffering righteous sufferer's execution centuries before crucifixion was even a Roman practice.

From the cross Jesus speaks words of forgiveness for his executioners, assurance to a repentant criminal dying beside him ("today you will be with me in paradise"), tender care for his mother's future, and finally the cry that pierces the whole scene — "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" — echoing Psalm 22 as he bears, in some way beyond full comprehension, the weight of human sin and separation from the Father. Darkness covers the land from noon until three, and at the moment Jesus cries out "It is finished" and gives up his spirit, the Temple curtain separating the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place tears from top to bottom — heaven's own declaration that the way to God has been opened.

A Roman centurion overseeing the execution responds, "Truly this was the Son of God," and the Gospel writers treat the crucifixion not as tragedy alone but as the very center of God's plan of redemption, the moment sin's penalty is paid in full by the sinless Son standing in the place of sinners.

Dating

The year of the crucifixion is a genuine, long-standing question among evangelical scholars, with the two leading candidates being Friday, April 7, AD 30 and Friday, April 3, AD 33 (a minority argue for AD 29 or 32). The debate turns on several intersecting calculations: (1) the length of Jesus's public ministry — John's Gospel names at least three, arguably four, Passovers, suggesting a roughly three-to-three-and-a-half-year ministry that, combined with a baptism around AD 27-28, points toward AD 30; (2) which year Nisan 14 (or 15) actually fell on a Friday, based on astronomical reconstruction of the Jewish lunar calendar — a calculation some scholars (notably Harold Hoehner, and Colin Humphreys and W. Graeme Waddington, favoring AD 33, partly via a proposed lunar eclipse) read differently than others who favor AD 30; and (3) Luke 3:1's dating of John the Baptist's ministry to Tiberius's 'fifteenth year,' which shifts slightly depending on whether one counts from Tiberius's sole reign (AD 14) or an earlier co-regency. This app follows AD 30 as the primary, most widely held evangelical date, while affirming that AD 33 remains a live, well-argued position within faithful scholarship — the dispute is entirely over calendar placement, never over whether the crucifixion happened as the Gospels describe.

Scripture references

• Matthew 27:27-56
• Mark 15:16-41
• Luke 23:26-49
• John 19:16-37

Other witnesses

• Tacitus, Annals 15.44
• Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 18.3.3