The Divine Week

Revelation 11:9–12 describes two witnesses rising after three and a half days. Revelation 12:1–5 depicts sun, moon, stars and a child caught up to God. These are distinct passages and durations; neither dates the crucifixion.

Tiberius reigned AD 14–37; Pilate administered Judea approximately AD 26–36; Caiaphas held office during this period. Luke 3:1–3 names Tiberius’s fifteenth year, usually AD 28–29, with earlier alternatives. Luke 3:23 says Jesus was “about thirty.” John names Passovers at John 2:13, 6:4 and 11:55; John 2:20 mentions forty-six years of Temple building.

Three consecutive ministry Passovers in AD 26, 27 and 28 require baptism before spring AD 26, at least two years plus earlier ministry, and a reckoning of Tiberius’s years from shared authority. Shared authority is documented, but numbering imperial years from it is not proved. Three named Passovers do not themselves yield exactly three and a half years. Seasonal arguments may imply more time; an autumn AD 27 placement of Luke 4 requires justification within an earlier start. Numbers 4’s age thirty governs Levitical service, not a universal high-priestly rule; Hebrews 7 associates Jesus with Melchizedek.

Calendar reconstruction: Lunar conjunction, visible crescent, observation, official month designation and intercalation are separate questions. The first new moon after the equinox was not invariably Nisan. Modern fixed-calendar dates do not prove first-century Jerusalem observance.

The standard Julian Nisan 14 dates reproduce Humphreys and Waddington’s Jerusalem crescent reconstruction (1992, Table 1); their month designations remain reconstructed, and their article concludes for AD 33. Weekday checks alone cannot verify an intercalary month. The Wednesday scenarios considered are AD 28, 31 and 34, not an exhaustive proof across all ancient calendars.

April 28 in AD 28 requires Nisan 1 to begin at sunset April 14. A Babylonian-calendar correspondence does not establish Jerusalem’s practice. AD 31 similarly depends on an April Nisan; its evening lunar eclipse establishes neither month designation nor the daytime darkness. AD 34 depends on March being accepted rather than intercalated and creates ministry-length difficulties.

Wheel premise: At least forty years between crucifixion and summer AD 70, following testing patterns in Numbers 14:33–34 and Deuteronomy 8:2. Neither passage explicitly begins such a dated period at the crucifixion. AD 28 yields roughly 42 years, AD 30 40, AD 31 39 and AD 34 36. AD 30 meets the minimum but fails this study’s standard Wednesday criterion. Yoma 39b concerns the Temple’s final forty years; it does not identify Jesus or establish a forty-two-year interval from AD 28.

An interpretation of Ezekiel 40:1, Arakhin 12a and Leviticus 25:9 proposes an autumn 574 BC Jubilee proclaimed at Atonement, Tishri 10. Ezekiel explicitly names neither Jubilee nor month; a competing reading places the vision in Nisan, spring 573 BC. A Jubilee being due does not establish actual observance. Rodger Young uses 49-year cycles; the Wheel of Ages’s continuous 50-year extension is a separate hypothesis.

If the anchor, interval, continuity and autumn-year assumptions hold, an Atonement-to-Atonement Jubilee beginning in AD 27 contains spring AD 28. Divine Day 3 begins at Trumpets, Tishri 1 in autumn 3973 BC; spring AD 28 precedes its 4,000th autumn anniversary. The boundaries differ. The Fall date follows from the model and cannot independently confirm the crucifixion.

• KJV: passages linked throughout, especially the Passion narratives and Joshua 4:19.
• Colin J. Humphreys and W. G. Waddington, “The Jewish Calendar, a Lunar Eclipse and the Date of Christ’s Crucifixion,” Tyndale Bulletin 43.2 (1992), pp. 331–351, Table 1. Their competing conclusion is Friday, April 3, AD 33.
• Rodger C. Young, “Ezekiel’s Jubilee: Real Or Rabbinic Fiction?,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 67 (2024), parts 1–2; distinct 49-year model.
• Babylonian Talmud, Arakhin 12a and Yoma 39b, on the Jubilee interpretation and final-forty-years tradition respectively.
• Hebcal converter, 10 Nisan 5788 gives Thursday, April 6, 2028 Gregorian in the fixed Hebrew calendar.

AD 28 dates above are Julian; the Wheel of Ages’s date finder is proleptic Gregorian. April 28 Julian corresponds to April 26 Gregorian. The Wheel of Ages calibrates its chronology from Jubilee 80: Atonement in AD 27 through Trumpets in AD 28. The festival dates use a projected fixed Hebrew calendar and do not establish ancient observed crescent dates.