Three crosses silhouetted on a hill at dawnThe Easter story as believed and practiced by most Christians just does not add up for me. That is my opinion, based on what I have read and researched over the past several years. It does not add up as far as logic, common sense, and historical facts go. So here is what I have learned, and where I land on it.

What most Christians practice is this: Christ crucified on “Good Friday,” risen on “Easter morning.” I find several things wrong with this teaching:

  1. The history and tradition of first-century Hebrew culture.
  2. The words of Yahshua Messiah Himself.
  3. The historical and cultural traditions of first-century Rome.
  4. The recorded word of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

First, the words of Yahshua. He said in Mark 9:31: “For he taught his disciples, and said unto them, The Son of man is delivered into the hands of men, and they shall kill him; and after that he is killed, he shall rise the third day.”

And Matthew 12:40: “For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”

So here is the question: did Yahshua tell the truth? If He did not, the whole Word falls. Think about that. How can the Messiah be crucified on Friday and rise on Sunday morning, and that be “three days and three nights”? Let us look at what we actually celebrate in the three days we call Easter weekend:

  1. Maundy Thursday — the Last Supper, or Passover
  2. Good Friday — the day the Messiah was crucified
  3. Easter, or Resurrection Sunday

Start with Maundy Thursday. According to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the Last Supper was the Passover meal. Here is the first problem: by Hebrew reckoning the day begins at sundown, and Passover is a seven-day festival. If the Messiah ate the Passover on Thursday evening and was crucified Friday, then tried and executed during the feast itself — when the chief priests had already said “not on the feast day, lest there be an uproar among the people” (Matthew 26:5). That is worth sitting with.

Now let me be honest about the other side

If I am going to be straight with you, I have to deal with the strongest objection to my own argument — because it is a good one.

The Jews did not count days the way we do. Any part of a day counted as the whole day. Esther 4:16: the Jews are told to fast “three days, night or day” — and then Esther 5:1 says she went in to the king “on the third day.” Not after 72 hours. On the third day. Same with 1 Samuel 30:12-13: a man goes “three days and three nights” without food, and it is described as “three days” ago. The Talmud states it plainly: part of a day is reckoned as the whole (Jerusalem Talmud, Shabbat 9:3).

So when Yahshua said “three days and three nights,” He was speaking in the idiom of His own people — and Friday afternoon to Sunday morning touches three days by that reckoning. I will not pretend Matthew 12:40 demands a literal 72 hours. It does not. The Gospels themselves say He rose “the third day” (Matthew 16:21, Luke 24:46, 1 Corinthians 15:4), and “the third day” from Friday is Sunday. That part of the traditional timeline survives scrutiny.

But notice what this does and does not prove. It proves the Friday-to-Sunday span can fit the idiom. It does not prove Friday is certain. And that is my real point: the church teaches Good Friday with absolute certainty, as if the text demands it. It does not.

What year was it? We do not know for sure.

Here is the astronomical data. The chart below uses figures from the U.S. Naval Observatory’s Astronomical Applications Department (as published when I first wrote this; their site has since moved, so verify against current sources). The times were adjusted +2 hours from Greenwich to Jerusalem time. The first evening of the visible crescent moon begins the new Hebrew day at sundown, which falls on the following Gregorian date.

In the whole range of possible years, only 30 AD (April 7) and 33 AD (April 3) put Nisan 14 on a Friday. Scholars are genuinely split between the two — good scholars, on both sides. And for 33 AD there are two possible Passover dates depending on whether an extra month was inserted that year (Saturday April 4 or Sunday May 3). So anyone who tells you “astronomy proves the crucifixion was April 3, 33 AD” is overstating. Astronomy narrows it to two candidates. It does not pick the winner.

The problem nobody wants to talk about

There is a real tension in the Gospels themselves about the Last Supper, and honest people admit it.

Matthew, Mark, and Luke present the Last Supper as the Passover meal, eaten Thursday evening — Nisan 15 by Jewish reckoning, the feast already begun. But John places the crucifixion on “the preparation of the passover” (John 19:14) — the lambs being slain in the Temple while the Lamb of God is on the cross. In John 18:28, the priests will not enter Pilate’s hall “lest they should be defiled; but that they might eat the passover” — the meal has not happened yet.

So which is it? Did He eat the Passover, or die as it was being prepared? The proposals: some say John and the Synoptics used different calendars (the Qumran community did keep a different one). Some say “preparation of the passover” just means “Friday of Passover week” — the word for preparation day (paraskeue) was also the ordinary word for Friday. Some say John arranged it theologically, the Lamb dying with the lambs.

I will tell you plainly: this one is disputed, and I am not going to pretend I have settled what scholars have debated for centuries. But notice — the very existence of this debate proves my point. If the text were as clear as the tradition claims, there would be nothing to debate.

So where does that leave us?

Here is what I can say with confidence:

The resurrection itself is certain. “He rose again the third day according to the scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:4). That is the foundation. Everything else is detail.

The name “Easter” has no biblical warrant. The word appears exactly once in the King James Bible — Acts 12:4, “intending after Easter to bring him forth to the people.” The Greek word there is pascha. Passover. Every other time, the same translators rendered it “Passover.” Easter is the name of a pagan spring goddess, and her name got stamped onto the resurrection of the Messiah. That alone should make us stop and think.

The customs have no biblical warrant. Eggs, rabbits, sunrise services — show me the chapter and verse. They are not there. They came from somewhere, and it was not Jerusalem.

The timeline is tradition, not text. Friday can work by Jewish reckoning. But the year is uncertain, the Gospels’ meal chronology has a genuine tension, and the church’s absolute certainty about “Good Friday” rests on tradition far more than on proof. A church that was honest would say “we believe Friday” instead of “thus saith the Lord.”

I am not saying everything here is the absolute truth. But with this evidence, I believe what is taught about Easter in most churches does not hold up — not the name, not the customs, and not the certainty. If it is wrong, why is it taught? Is it not the purpose of our lives to seek the truth? Yahweh’s truth, not man’s.