good Friday

[Churchman25]

The friday that Good Friday is celebrated on would that be the exact friday Jesus was crucified on or could it have been another one but the church fathers chose that one to honor him?

 

[Ad_Orientem]

It’s not an exact date. Good Friday is celebrated two days before Easter Sunday, whose date varies based in part on the cycles of the moon. Even the formula for calculating the date of Easter has varied over the centuries, and differs today between Catholics & Orthodox.

 

[Churchman25]

[www.ncregister.com/.../when-precisely-did-jesus-die-the-year-...National Catholic Register](www.ncregister.com/.../when-precisely-did-jesus-die-the-year-...National Catholic Register)

This link tells us about the exact day Christ was crucified on according to Jimmy Akin It was friday April 3 AD 33 at 3:00 pm.

Now in 2017 April 3 is on a monday. Which leads me to ask if the approximate day on which he was crucified would be a monday this year shouldn’t it be celebrated that following friday.

 

[Wesrock]

First, that link may provide good analysis, but we can’t know the exact date for sure. Second, the Jews used a mostly lunar calendar, whereas modern day society uses a solar calendar. So the Jewish Passover would not fall on the same solar calendar day each year, and was linked instead to both the spring equinox, the lunar cycle, and the judgement of Jewish authorities. As such, it’s been determined to be more appropriate to time the celebration of Easter (and good Friday) with a Passover calculation. Christians use the first full moon after the vernal equinox (March 21, western Christians use the Gregorian calendar, eastern Christians use the Julian calendar, which are out of synch, and such differences themselves could have a broader discussion) to calculate when Passover falls, and place Easter on the following Sunday. This does not always match up with how modern Jews calculate the Passover, but their methods are also not the same as what was used in the first century or even pre-Exile, either.

It’s complicated. But Easter is tied to the Passover, and Passover is tied to the spring (vernal) equinox and the full moon, and the Church has the authority to to set the liturgical calendar.

There was debate in the early Church over whether Easter should be celebrated based on a fixed solar calendar date, but tying it to a more traditional Passover calculation won out, and the Church is within its rights here.

 

[Wesrock]

I suppose I should comment on the Gregorian vs. Julian calendar differences. The vernal equinox is March 21 in both, but they are out of synch. The Julian calendar is the one that was in use when the current Easter calculation was first determined. It is a solar calendar. However, it is slightly inaccurate. As such, over the centuries, the dates on the calendar have been drifting. Given enough time, January 1 in the Julian calendar will drift from the beginning of winter to being the height of summer. Some Christians argue that this calendar should be used liturgically as its the one that was used when liturgical date calculations were set.

The Gregorian calendar is a more recent and is much more accurate in calculating the solar year. When it was adopted by the West, they shifted the calendar dates intentionally such that March 21 is (intended to be) the same day as March 21 was when it was first set in the fourth (?) century under the Julian calendar. The west accounted for the drift in the Julian calendar and set the Gregorian calendar to account for the drift that had occurred before its adoption.

There’s obviously some disagreement over which is more appropriate for liturgical use.

 

[Churchman25]

Since the first council was 325 years after Christ had been born wouldn’t an exact date of his crucifixion be common knowledge at that time?

 

[Wesrock]

Since the first council was 325 years after Christ had died wouldnt an exact date be common knowlege at that time?

An exact solar date was not common knowledge, and it was also determined to be more appropriate to link Easter with a Passover calculation, which is not linked to any one day in the solar year.

 

[Tim_D]

This link tells us about the exact day Christ was crucified on according to Jimmy Akin It was friday April 3 AD 33 at 3:00 pm.

This couldn’t be more wrong. Serious historians place Jesus’ birth between roughly 2-4 B.C. (some even going as high as 6 B.C.) based on our historical knowledge of the death of Herod. This idea that Jesus was 33 at the time of his death is also fanciful, since we cannot determine through scripture exactly how old He was at the beginning of His ministry, nor can we determine through scripture or tradition just how long His ministry lasted. Even if He was 33 at the time of the crucifixion, the fact that the nativity was probably between 2-4 B.C. would put the crucifixion around 29 AD, a date which many serious historians prefer.

 

[Churchman25]

I dont understand how could he have been born 2-4 BC when BC stands for before Christ?
Could someone explain this.

 

[Wesrock]

It was a best estimate when the current year system we use was adopted, given the historical details available in the scriptures.

 

[Ad_Orientem]

I dont understand how could he have been born 2-4 BC when BC stands for before Christ?
Could someone explain this.

Because our dating system was devised in the 6th century, using the scholarship of that time. According to 20th / 21st century scholarship, Dionysius Exiguus made an error in calculating the number of years from Christ’s birth until his own time.