The Date of Jesus’ Crucifixion
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Tiberius’s 15th year. The ancient sources unequivocally state that Tiberius began his reign upon the death of Emperor Augustus in August of a.d. 14. While some scholars, as noted above, propose that there was a co-regency of Augustus and Tiberius between a.d. 11/12 and 14, no reliable ancient evidence for such a co-regency has ever been found. While Tiberius may have been given charge of certain provinces prior to Augustus’s death, this co-administration was most likely not empire-wide, and ancient sources universally reckon the beginning of Tiberius’s reign from a.d. 14. But even if, for argument’s sake, such a co-regency did in fact occur, it is still much more likely that the calculation of Tiberius’s reign would have begun in a.d. 14, and therefore Jesus’ ministry began sometime between late a.d. 28 and a.d. 30 (see first section above).
The 46 years of building the temple. In seeking to understand the references to the temple in Jesus’ interchange with the Jewish leaders in John 2:20, it is important to recognize that “temple” in this passage refers to Greek naos, the sanctuary or temple proper (see Herod’s Temple in the Time of Jesus), not the surrounding temple complex (Gk. hieron) (see Herod’s Temple Complex in the Time of Jesus). Josephus (Jewish Antiquities 15.380, 421) does not merely refer to the beginning of renovation of the temple sanctuary in 20/19 b.c. but also to its completion one and a half years later in 18/17 b.c. (The wider temple area, however, continued to be renovated.) Therefore, when Jesus and the Jewish leaders are speaking of the construction of the temple proper (naos) in John 2:20, they cannot be talking about that renovation as still ongoing, because, as Josephus makes clear, that renovation had in fact been completed decades prior to that time (46 years, to be exact).
For this reason it is much more likely that the Jews are saying that the construction of the temple sanctuary was completed 46 years ago (18/17 b.c.). (The Gk. expression in John 2:20 can legitimately be translated, “This temple was built forty-six years ago.” This makes better sense of the Gk. grammar: the dative case of “forty-six years” is most likely a reference to a point in time [it is not accusative, which would indicate length of time or duration], and the aorist verb for “built” most likely fits with a completed action [if it were referring to a continuing process of 46 years, the imperfect tense would have been better suited].) If this is the case (as seems much more likely), then 46 years later than 18/17 b.c. yields a.d. 29/30, which, in turn, comports well with a three-year ministry of Jesus and a crucifixion date of a.d. 33. Thus, John 2:20 occurred at the Passover on Nisan 14 of a.d. 30, and Jesus was crucified three years later, in a.d. 33.
Passovers in John. John seems to assume that Jesus’ ministry coincided with at least three or possibly four Passovers, which he mentions at different points in Jesus’ ministry (John 2:13
But if John the Baptist began his ministry in a.d. 29, then Jesus probably began his ministry in late a.d. 29 or early a.d. 30. Then the Passovers in John would occur on Nisan 14 in a.d. 30 (John 2:13), Nisan 14 in a.d. 31 (either the unnamed feast in John 5:1 or else a Passover that John does not mention), Nisan 14 in a.d. 32 (John 6:4), and Nisan 14 in a.d. 33 (John 11:55, the Passover at which Jesus was crucified). If this reckoning is correct, then Jesus was probably crucified on April 3 (Nisan 14) in a.d. 33.
These references to Passover in John, then, most naturally suggest that during Jesus’ ministry he attended at least three, and possibly four, Passovers (perhaps including a Passover alluded to only in the Synoptics), resulting in a three-year ministry. Together with the reference to Tiberius’s 15th year—which, starting from a.d. 14/15 (see above), brings us to a.d. 29/30 for the beginning of Jesus’ ministry—the three-year ministry of Jesus indicated by John yields a crucifixion date of a.d. 33.
As noted in the arguments for a.d. 30, some have proposed that the first Passover mentioned in John (at the occasion of Jesus’ cleansing of the temple) is the same Passover mentioned by the Synoptics at the end of Jesus’ ministry, and that John transposed it for theological reasons. This would result in only two Passovers in John, and a crucifixion date of a.d. 30 would still be possible. But this is problematic in light of the explicit time markers in both John and the Synoptics with regard to the respective temple cleansing they record. The Synoptics all agree that the temple cleansing took place at the end of Jesus’ public ministry (Matt. 21:12–17 par.). John, on the other hand, says in 2:12 that “after this” (the miracle at Cana), Jesus went with his mother and disciples to Capernaum “for a few days,” and that then “the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem” (2:13). These specific time markers make it difficult to conclude that John transferred an event that actually took place at the end of Jesus’ ministry to the beginning of his account of Jesus’ ministry merely for theological reasons. In addition, there are other differences in detail between the respective temple cleansings recorded by the Synoptics and John. For this reason many (though not all) conservative evangelical interpreters believe that the temple cleansing recorded in John 2:13–22 is different from that recorded in the Synoptics and took place, as John seems to indicate, at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, most likely in a.d. 30.
Given the arguments above, the evidence for a date of a.d. 33 for Jesus’ crucifixion seems much stronger. However, because the date of a.d. 30 is held by a number of respected NT scholars, both dates are included in the various chronologies herein.