I don't know if this helps, but the traditional Christian chronology is that Jesus was crucified on Friday the 14th, at the same time the lambs were slaughtered. John 19:14 makes this clear, stating, "It was the day of preparation for the Passover." This is the origin of the Christian imagery of "Jesus, the lamb who was slain for our sins."

Jesus had a special meal with unleavened bread with his disciples on the previous night, but the traditional explanation is that he was not planning to be alive during the Passover so he celebrated one night early.

@BruceAlderman thanks. That's interesting, and also addresses a difficulty with the Passover interpretation. I may be misunderstanding the chronology (I'm not fluent in the gospels), but any timeline that involves actions from Jewish officials on a holiday is highly suspect. With the timeline you give, everything's done before the holiday starts, so no problem.

@MonicaCellio By the way, my reading of Mark suggests that the Sanhedrin (or portions of it) did meet on Passover morning to conduct Jesus' trial. Part of the theme of that book is that Jesus was wrongly accused and suffered death as an innocent man.

I struggle with fitting John's account into the picture.

It could be that Mark left the timing ambiguous to further his theme or it could be there's a genuine contradiction.

My faith suggests that there's a way to fit them together, but that's not really a good hermeneutic in my opinion. ;-)

Your answer gives me a lot to think about:

@JonEricson oh, so the idea is that the {system, community, powers-that-be} was "corrupt" enough to go ahead and ignore Jewish law on this? I hadn't considered that. If so, then either that was routine at the time ("yeah, I'm working on Saturday, so?" says the modern assimilated Jew...), or this was considered important enough to violate the law for. Was it seen as urgent enough that it couldn't wait another day? (honest question, not rhetorical)

@MonicaCellio The way I read Mark, it was so urgent they couldn't wait. Jesus had just come into Jerusalem earlier in the week in a procession that signaled the start of a new Jewish Kingdom in the minds of some:

And they were worried enough about the crowd to arrest Jesus in secret.

So they (according to Mark) didn't want to lose the opportunity to deal with a dangerous man.

@JonEricson Interesting. It's almost like they saw things unfolding in "internet time", so to speak. Usually we think of things building more slowly.)

@JonEricson but once they arrested him, couldn't they have held him until after the holiday before holding the trial? Did they anticipate riots if they waited, maybe?

@MonicaCellio Riots would be my guess. But it is strange they waited until Passover when Jerusalem was stuffed with worshipers.

@JonEricson I find that I'm now curious about how those last several days unfolded. There were several days between arrival and 14 Nisan; what happened during them? Were things more quiet and then there was a burst at the end, such that the authorities felt they had to act Right Now? Was there a high level of fervor all along, and for some unknown reason they ignored it? Something else?

@MonicaCellio Roughly a third of the gospels deal with this last week. It's when Jesus cleansed the temple for instance. He complained at his arrest that he had been teaching at the temple all week and why didn't they arrest him then.

@JonEricson oh, do we get chronology there? I know the events are discussed, but, e.g. can we figure out from there when he cleansed the temple versus when he gave some of his big speeches etc? (Clearly it's time for me to reread...)

I also wonder about the unwritten story of what the Romans were up to that week. I think the Sanhedrin was under a lot of stress.

@JonEricson yeah, an emergent leader with a mob behind him was a threat to them; this wasn't just about blasphemy or Rome wouldn't have cared.

@MonicaCellio Some of the chronology is in the gospels and some is in the traditions. There's some confusion about exact days because of the different accounts.

@MonicaCellio Yep. "King of the Jews" was pretty much the prefect title to take if you wanted to be killed at that time.

@JonEricson darn. So nothing like a Wikipedia page listing events in order with dates? Have to do it the hard way, I guess... :-)

(The wikipedia article I was using to research my answer doesn't get quite that detailed.)

@MonicaCellio The best I have found so far is this Sunday School lesson.

@MonicaCellio Ah. This is more like what I was looking for: jesus.org/death-and-resurrection/holy-week-and-passion/…

Who knew there was a jesus.org?!

> This column represents the day/night cycles very possibly in popular usage among the Galilean Jews—sunup to sunup. Notice that slaying of the lambs "between the evenings" on Nisan 14 would in this case happen on Thursday afternoon (which is when Jesus and His disciples kept the feast).

Hmm... I wonder if there's any evidence for that or if it's speculative. Odd.

@JonEricson wow, who knew? Thanks!

@JonEricson can't tell yet, but interesting either way.

@JonEricson I'm having trouble making etiher of the Hebrew-date columns line up with the events listed, but day of week + events is useful on its own.

@MonicaCellio Yeah. I think I'm missing something too. I appreciate having the verses associated with the days, but I have some quibbles about the way the differences are reconciled.

room topic changed to Passover and Nisan 14: Imported from a comment discussion on hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/questions/2198/… [matthew] [prophecy]

Here's a site that might be useful. It does very strongly advocate a specific point of view, but it also acknowledges areas where we just don't have enough evidence to make a definite judgment. The page begins with a couple quotes from 2nd century Christians discussing the timeline.

The Catholic Encyclopedia offers the traditional explanation for reconciling the date of the crucifixion between the synoptics and John.

The gist of it is that too many things happened the day of the crucifixion (e.g. Joseph of Arimethea buying linen for the burial, Nicodemus buying burial spices, the women preparing the spices) that could not have happened on Passover.

@BruceAlderman that looks like a really useful compilation. Thanks! (Not sure why they keep saying 8 days of Passover rather than 7, though, unless they're counting the day of preparation?)

@BruceAlderman yeah, all of that would be forbidden on Passover (or Shabbat).