Good Friday

I had coffee with my sister and her father this afternoon. During the conversation, we got on the topic of religion. It should be noted that I’m a Christian, my sister’s father is for the purpose of this post a Hindu, and my sister is somewhere in between both of those.

My sister was relating a story about her work, where someone came on a conference call and wished everyone a Happy Good Friday. She was disturbed by the use of “Happy” when acknowledging the day, because the day itself marks the anniversary of Jesus’ death. “How can it be happy if you’re remembering someone’s death? It’s sad, no?” she asked.

While I see her point, I don’t agree with it. Christians don’t view Jesus’ death as a sad event, which is even why we call the day Good Friday. It is a day of redemption. A day of forgiveness that cleans the slate and allows us access to eternity with God. We are thankful of the willing sacrifice of Jesus, but more importantly, we are aware that the story didn’t end there. If you take that one day out of context and you don’t combine it with the Resurrection three days later, then I can see how you’d view it as sad. Most deaths are permanent, so they represent a finality that hints at never seeing that person again. It is sad to think of not having more conversations, spending more time, or making more memories with that person. But you can’t stop at Friday in the story of Easter, so there is no reason to be sad.

My sister clarified that the sad part wasn’t just that Jesus died, but that it was our sins that put Him there. That’s true, and it’s a whole other point. We did put Jesus on that cross, and we have to own up to that. But to focus on that over the larger sacrifice and what it represented is self-centered, instead of Jesus-centered. The story is not about what we did, but about what Jesus did…for us. And if we focus on Jesus, then it’s a day of celebration, not of sadness.

My sister’s father pointed out that the sadness has more of a historical context than a Biblical or religious context. He said that since the death of Jesus occurred on a Friday the 13th that it’s generally accepted to be a bad thing. Intrigued by this statement, I decided to do some research on this.

According to the book The Final Days of Jesus: The Most Important Week of the Most Important Person Who Ever Lived, Jesus’ death most likely occurred in AD 33. While many scholars have tried to argue that it actually occurred in AD 30 instead, the historical evidence doesn’t support that.

In the Bible, we know that John the Baptist’s ministry began before Jesus’ and that it occurred “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar . . .” (Luke 3:1). We know from Roman historians that Tiberius was confirmed as Caesar by the Roman Senate on August 19, AD 14. So, if we extrapolate that his fifteenth year of reign started in late AD 28, then we can assume that John’s ministry most likely started in early AD 29, and we have a starting point for our timeline.

Since Jesus’ ministry began shortly after John’s, we can surmise that it began in late AD 29. In the gospel of Luke, he mentions that “Jesus, when he began his ministry, was about thirty years of age” (Luke 3:23). If we follow the commonly-held belief that Jesus was born in 6 or 5 BC, then He would have been around 32 years old, which would easily place Him at “about thirty years of age.”

The gospel of John mentions that Jesus attended three Passover meals, with the last being shortly before His death. The other gospels also mention a possible fourth that is not recorded in John. So, we can assume from this that His ministry lasted about four years. Since Passover falls in March or April, the first would have been in AD 30 with the last occurring in AD 33.

Since Jesus’ death occurred on “the day of Preparation” (John 19:31), or Friday, we know that it coincided with Passover. The most common calendar used in Jesus’ day was the Pharisaic-rabbinic calendar, and we know from Exodus that Passover always occurred on the fifteenth day of Nisan. In AD 33, Nisan 15 was April 3.

Why did you just slog through that long history lesson to reconstruct the timeline of Jesus’ death? Great question! AD 33 was a common year starting on a Thursday. This means that it had three occurrences of Friday the 13th during the year…February, March, and November. Based on the timeline we constructed, Jesus’ death most likely occurred on April 3, which means that it could not have occurred on a Friday the 13th. Which makes total sense, since the myth of Friday the 13th is most commonly associated to King Philip attempting to arrest or kill all of the Knights Templar on October 13, 1307 in order to seize their reputed wealth. But that’s another story.