The date of death of Jesus of Nazareth.

• Author: Depuydt, Leo

BORN INTO A WORKING-CLASS JEWISH HOME at Nazareth in Galilee a couple of years before 1 C.E., Jesus early on devotes himself to rabbinical learning. After leading a life of anonymity until about age thirty, he sets out to preach his message. His followers consider him the "Anointed One," Messiah in Hebrew, Christ in Greek. But some in the establishment interpret his success as a threat and conspire to eliminate him. One Thursday evening in the month of Nisan, in early spring, after sharing a last meal with his disciples, Jesus is arrested. The next day, a Friday, he is tried and put to death. In the following centuries, the religion founded on his teachings spreads throughout the inhabited world.

INTRODUCTION

The day Jesus of Nazareth died--the day of the Crucifixion or Passion in Christian tradition--occupies a special place in chronology. No topic has been examined as thoroughly. There are two levels at which one may engage the topic. One can study it as a rite of passage: the serious study of chronology presupposes familiarity with its great problems. Or one can try to say something new. One type of new statement is impossible--proposing a new date. Only a handful of days enter into consideration. Everyone has always agreed that the day was (1) a Friday, (2) falling close to full moon, (3) in early spring, (4) in the late 20s or early 30s of the first century C.E. This paper's aim is to restore the year date 29 C.E. , once generally favored and then entirely discarded, to its original status. It is the year best supported by the sources.

By the early l900s, 29 C.E. had come to be generally accepted as the year of Jesus's death. 18 March 29 C.E. is reported in volume 3 of the well-known eleventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (Turner 1910). It seemed as if the last word had been said on the matter. But new developments around the turn of the century, notably the decipherment of Babylonian astronomy and the discovery of Aramaic double dates in papyri from Egypt, provided new impetus to astronomical chronology. As a result, 29 C.E. was dismissed, the reason being astronomical. If Jesus died in that year, then lunar Nisan, the month in which he died, had to have begun before the first crescent could have been seen. The first crescent is initially seen above the western horizon in the evening soon after sunset one to two days after new moon. New moon is when the moon is directly between the sun and the earth and therefore invisible from the earth. One to two hours after first visibility, the first crescent sets below the horizon, followi ng the sun.

The hunt was on for an alternative date. In 1930, in the distinguished science journal Astronomische Nachrichten, O. Gerhardt concluded (1930: 162) from an "objective" examination of all the evidence that, "clearly," Jesus died on 7 April 30 C.E. Still, he hoped (p. 139) that readers would find the materials presented with sufficient transparency to judge for themselves and might even reach different conclusions. A different conclusion followed soon enough. In 1934, the eminent J. K. Fotheringham (1934: 161), classicist turned astronomer, argued for another date, 3 April 33 C.E., because it "on the whole.., offers fewer difficulties than any of the others." But he added, "[M]y ambition has been rather to explain the character and tendencies of the different lines of evidence than to arrive at a conclusion." The fountain of ingenuity seems then to have been exhausted. Decades passed until two recent contributions in ZDMG by W. Hinz (see section 4 below) reopened the issue.

The argument raised against 29 C.E. will not be disputed here. My aim is rather to show that the assumption on which that argument is founded is not in the least binding.

Command over all that is written on this topic would be difficult to achieve. But no such command seems necessary to produce a new line of argument. What follows is a source study. Should the sources somehow have it completely wrong, we cannot move beyond them. Then there are also the patent contradictions in the sources. The most striking is that some sources place the death of Jesus on 14 Nisan; others, on 15 Nisan. If absence of contradiction were required, all efforts at dating the event would need to be abandoned. But the contradictions also mean that not all sources count. At least some must be wrong. To some extent, historical inquiry is less about establishing what happened than about preparing and critiquing sources so that others might judge in their own right what occurred.

The divine status of Jesus in the Christian tradition has sometimes made it difficult to examine his life fully by the dispassionate criteria of the historical method. Thus, the valuable light shed on the topic by Jewish sources has only recently come to be fully appreciated. Two milestones are Morris Goldstein's outstanding Jesus in the Jewish Tradition (1950) and Joseph Klausner's earlier Jesus of Nazareth (1925), the latter translated from the Hebrew by Herbert Danby.

The present paper has four parts. The first two concern the year of the event. In part one, the evidence in favor of 29 C.E. is adduced. Its reliability is then scrutinized. In part two, the main objection to 29 C.E. is first described and then exposed as being the result of an unsubstantiated assumption. Part three concerns the month and day of the event. In 29 C.E., the choice is between 18 March and 15 April, the only two Fridays falling close to full moon in early spring that year. 18 March is preferred here. Part four analyzes the most recent contribution to the topic. I shall make every effort to render the argument accessible and transparent to those with no prior knowledge of the topic.

1. 29 C.E.

   1.1. The Evidence

   According to respected Latin church authors dating from the second century C.E. onward, the year of Jesus's death was that in which the two Gemini were Roman consuls, 29 C.E. (1) It seems fair to characterize 29 C.E. as the "traditional date" transmitted by ancient Christian sources. The gospels give no clear indication of the year of the event. Much effort has been expended to extract a year date from them, with different and uncertain results.

   The full tripartite names of the two consuls, consisting of praenomen, nomen, and cognomen, are Gaius Rufius Geminus (Paulys Real-Encyclopadie VII [1912]: 208) and Lucius Rubellius Geminus (ibid. IA.l [1914]: 1160). The Roman year, of which the modern calendar is a continuation, already ran from i January to 31 December at the time. The order and the identities of the consuls of Rome are so well known that it seems superfluous to adduce bibliographical references. A readily accessible list of the consuls for each year from 509 B.C.E. to 337 C.E. is Bickerman's (1980: 140-62; for 29 C.E., see 154). It is based on comprehensive publications of the lists by A. Degrassi and T. R. Broughton.

   At least six considerations diminish the chance of error in the transmission of the consul date. First, dating by consuls was normal in Rome; rare dating methods might be more prone to error in transmission. Second, a pair of personal names is more distinctive and memorable as a year date than a mere year number. Third, the fact that the two consuls share the cognomen Geminus is distinctive and memorable. Fourth, there are no consuls of that cognomen in the decades preceding or following 29 C.E. Fifth, Rome ruled Palestine when Jesus died. The event was therefore dated directly in the Roman calendar. Conversions of dates from one calendar to another present more opportunities for error. Sixth, Pontius Pilate, the Roman administrator who sentenced Jesus, later returned to Rome; and Peter and Paul were martyred there. These connections bridge the distance between Palestine in the east, where the event happened, and the Latin sources in the west transmitting the year date.

   1.2. Is 29 C.E. True?

   All depends on how truth is defined. Each element in the present argument ought to be defined. That includes the concept of truth. In my view, truth is an impression of the individual mind. Thus, it cannot exist independently of the minds of people contemplating it. Two distinct impressions of the mind may be singled out. The first is the inability to answer the question, How else could it have been? The second impression is absolute freedom from that same question-so much so that one would be utterly baffled if the impression were contradicted. These two impressions differ in quality. Both are perceived as that which is often called truth.

   Instances of the second impression are the dates of the major events of the twentieth century C.E. We would be dumbfounded if it appeared that they had happened at dates other than those reported in the history books. Likewise, we would be speechless if we learned that we had been born in another year than we had thought we were. This second impression may be called the sense of absolute truth. It is ultimately a perception of the mind. Indeed, it is occasionally contradicted. It is difficult to produce the sense of absolute truth regarding the consul dating. The second impression, that of absolute truth, is passive. The mind does not seek alternatives. By contrast, the first impression is dynamic; the mind is searching. There are two main types of results: inability or ability to produce alternatives. Inability is close to the second impression here called absolute truth.

   In the present case, alternatives are conceivable. For example, the event may have been falsely associated with the year of the two Gemini at a later time. The earliest report of the consul date is two centuries younger than the event. The gospels mention only one year date in relation to the public life of Jesus, namely year 15 of the emperor Tiberius. That year is mentioned at Luke 3:1 in connection with the beginning of the public life of John the Baptist. By some theories, only about a year separated that event from the...