What Day Was The First Passover?
Question: The timing of the feasts in Leviticus 23 works out with the same time of year that Jesus was crucified. But can we find out what day of the week the first Passover occurred on?
Answer: Jesus ate the Passover meal with his disciples at the beginning of 14th Nisan. (In the Roman Julian calendar this was still the evening of Thursday, April 2, 33 AD—what Christians celebrate as Maundy Thursday.) Jesus died on the same day: on 14th Nisan at about 3:00 pm in the afternoon. (In the Julian calendar this was the afternoon of Friday, April 3, 33 AD—what Christians remember as Good Friday.) So Jesus was able to eat the Passover meal with his disciples at the beginning of 14th Nisan and he died later on that same day.
The Israelites do not have names for the days of the week, except the Sabbath. The other days are referred to as numbers, day one or day two, etc.
If we extend both the Rabbinic and Julian calendars backwards, we notice that when the original Passover occurred in 1406 BC the days 14th and 15th Abib were also the 6th day (Friday) and Sabbath (Saturday).
Jesus died on Good Friday and was in the tomb during the Sabbath. However, we have to say that the days of the week are not always certain when it comes to calendars.
Modern astronomers are able to work out when a new moon occurred, so we have a good idea when the start of a month began, but what day of the week the Hebrews were in is not so easy to calculate.
The Julian calendar calculated a year to be 365.25 days in length. (The Egyptian year was also the same length.) Julius Caesar introduced the Julian calendar to the Roman world in 46 BC, even though Greek astronomers, up to 100 years prior, knew that a year wasn’t quite that long.
The Julian calendar meant a day would be lost every 128 years. Pope Gregory in 1582 AD corrected the slight error by introducing a year that was 365.2425 days long: making a difference of 10 minutes 48 seconds per year. It doesn’t sound like much, but over long stretches of time the new length of the year proved to be far more accurate. That’s why we have the Gregorian calendar these days. But even so, a day is still lost, but only once in every 3,300 years.
Astronomers tend not to use the regular calendar because they need a system that is accurate for their calculations, so they use a “day count” method. Rather than counting solar years or lunar months, astronomers count the days themselves. They name each day since January 1, 4713 BC with a number. For example January 1, 4713 BC is called “0,” the following day, January 2, 4713 BC is called “1,” and so on. The system is called Julian Day Numbers.
We can look back with confidence when we attribute to each day its own specific number. The number given for the exodus on 14th Abib 1406 BC is 1,207,973. (We can check this date because we know when the new moon first began to show around the spring equinox, which would be the beginning of the month of Abib.)
If we check the date that Jesus died on the cross, April 3, 33AD (14th Nisan/Abib 33 AD), the Julian Day Number is 1,733,204. Now if we take the number of days between those two Julian Day Numbers we will arrive at the number of days between the first Passover and the crucifixion, the number is 525,231 days, a number divisible by 7.
We can also see there were 75,033 weeks between the Passover and the crucifixion.
Furthermore and interestingly we see that Julian Day Number 1,207,973 (14th Abib 1406 BC) was a particular day of the week. We can find out which day by dividing the number of days between the Passover and crucifixion. So if we think that day 1,207,973 (14th Nisan 1406 BC) might be a Friday, we can add the 525,231 days to check, and because the 525,231 days are divisible by 7, we find we are correct in supposing 14th Abib 1406 BC was a Friday too.