Recent scholarship recognizes two main possibilities for the site of Jesus’ crucifixion and burial: Gordon’s Calvary and the Garden Tomb; and inside the bounds of the Church of the Resurrection (hereinafter, “the church”). The current scholarly view is that the latter is the correct choice. I am personally 98% sure that the former is not correct and 85% sure that the latter is. Here are some arguments:
Gen. Charles Gordon popularized the notion that the northern site is correct, based not on archaeological evidence but on a strongly anti-Semitic typology which I will describe below. The church location was given official status by Emperor Constantine in the 4th century based on local Christian tradition. An apparently unbroken chain of succession of bishops in Jerusalem, and the importance of the death and burial, make it quite easy for me to believe that the tradition is valid.
In Gordon’s thinking, the skull-shaped outcropping represents the skull of Jesus; the Antonia Ridge, which arcs from northwest to southeast between his Golgotha and the Antonia Fortress outside the northwest corner of the Temple Mount is Jesus’ spine and torso; the Mount itself is the pelvis; the ridge on which the City of David rests represents the legs; and the Siloam pool, the feet. According to this imagery, that made the Jewish Temple an anus!
Gordon, like many people since, was impressed by the skull shape itself. After all, “Golgotha” does translate to “skull hill.” The problem with this is that with 2,000 years of weathering, the probability that the outcropping looked at all the same in Jesus’ day as it does now is virtually zero. The traditional site of Golgotha may be aptly named for either of two reasons: first, another Christian tradition, not so easy to believe, is that the skull of Adam was buried beneath the cross; the more plausible explanation is simply that this was a common execution site.
Both sites are likely execution places in that both are located at rock quarries close to a major road and a populated area. These conditions were ideal for Roman crucifixions, which were designed to be seen and to provide a deterrent to future malfeasance. Additionally, Jewish stoning was done by placing the guilty party at the bottom of a cliff or in a pit and rolling large stones on top of him or her.
Jewish law forbade executions inside the city. It was long thought that because the church location was inside the Third Wall of Jerusalem, it could not be the legitimate site of an execution. Gordon’s Calvary, on the other hand, was about a hundred yards outside the Third Wall, just off the Damascus Road. We now know, however, that the Third Wall was built later during the regency of Herod Agrippa I and later rulers, so both sites were appropriately outside the city at that time.
Both sites meet the criteria of a tomb in a garden located near the execution site. Gordon preferred the tranquil setting of the northern site as compared to the pomp and bustle of the church. This is merely an emotional preference, not any kind of proof, since in Jesus’ day the site of the garden at the church would have been just as tranquil.
Another “proof” used to champion the northern site was the discovery of two early tomb inscriptions found nearby. These have since been discredited.
The most telling argument of all is that it has become apparent from subsequent archaeological studies in Israel that the burial grounds around the church contain Second Temple era tombs, while the Garden Tomb and all those around it are from the Iron Age, in particular around the 7th and 6th centuries BC. Since John’s gospel describes Jesus’ tomb as “new”, it almost certainly wouldn’t have been built to specifications that had gone out of style centuries earlier. Though the two styles were somewhat similar at first glance, they were actually very much different.
I would suggest one more argument of my own to support the church as the authentic burial site: during the Roman period, Emperor Hadrian built a temple to Jupiter, not on the Temple Mount as used to be thought, but in the present Christian Quarter, adjacent to the eventual site of the Church of the Resurrection. Outside his temple, and squarely on top of the traditional site of Jesus’ tomb, he leveled the terrain and erected a statue of Aphrodite! Perhaps this was a response to the Christian traditions. My thinking is that, because the 10th Roman Legion was still quartered in the city, there would still, just a century later, be a great deal of institutional embarrassment over the “losing” of Jesus’ body and the subsequent development of a major and very troublesome new religion around the claims of His resurrection at that spot. I think that the inevitable Roman military traditions alone would constitute a very powerful argument in favor of that location.
I just dug up something that I posted in early June 2014, and took down again when part of it became old news. My original post was in response to an article that was being circulated claiming that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was planning to hand control of the traditional “Upper Room” site of Jesus’ Last Supper, on Mt. Zion, to Pope Francis, presumably so that it could be developed into yet another Catholic shrine. The author of the article was enraged because he viewed the Pope to be the False Prophet of Revelation and “giving him an official seat in this most sacred of places … is the Abomination of Desolation spoken of by Daniel.” The question was posed, “Should [the False Prophet] be glorified before the nations on Mount Zion, God’s holy mountain?”
Unfortunately, in my life I have seen no shortage of end-times weirdness, and this certainly qualifies. I would call it “poorly informed pop theology.”
What made me think of this now (April 2023) is that the current Southern Baptist Sunday School quarterly includes several lessons from John’s Gospel covering parts of the Last Supper, and also a back-page map showing the commentator’s interpretation of Jesus’ movements from the Upper Room to the Cross. He shows Jesus’ trek beginning at the traditional site on Mt. Zion. I usually tend to place a lot of stock in early Christian tradition, but I’m very dubious of this one, which I discussed in more detail in my own interpretation (see Jesus’ Last Steps).
The traditional “Upper Room” This is a 12th Century Crusader structure, image downloaded from Vintage Grace, constancedenninger.blogspot.com.
Honestly, I can’t really recall much detail from the article I was responding to, and the link to it is now broken, no doubt because the particular “abomination” it warned of never happened. I am now reposting an updated version of my response, simply because there are still points to be made about the Upper Room, and Eschatology in general. For perspective, I am Premillennial, and my views presuppose a pre-Tribulation Rapture of the Church.
The Abomination of Desolation will be a desecration of the Holy of Holies in the Tribulation Temple; not of the Upper Room, as stated in the article. The majority of today’s Christians belong to denominations that are either Catholic, Orthodox, or Reformed, and most of those teach that God has permanently turned His back on the Hebrew people. This is a characteristic of Covenant Theology in general, which I suspect is the reason the article elevates the Upper Room in significance, at the expense of the Jewish Temple.
Any suggestion that the prophesied Abomination would pertain to any strictly Christian holy site, like the Upper Room, is bogus. The end-time prophesies, and the Tribulation itself, are related wholly to Israel and to Gentile nations, not to the Church and New Testament Christianity. By the time of the Abomination, the Church will have been Raptured. Any believers present on earth as the Tribulation period advances will be worshiping in a totally Jewish context.
The Abomination of Desolation spoken of by Daniel, Jesus, Paul—and of course John in Revelation—referred to end-time events. It was prefigured during Intertestamental times by a similar Abomination perpetrated by the Syrian king Antiochus IV. It is not uncommon in history to see prophesied events prefigured by earlier events. Prefiguration is illustration. Because Antiochus defiled the Most Holy Place in the Jerusalem Temple, we are strengthened in our understanding that it will be the Most Holy Place in the Jerusalem Temple that Antichrist will defile.
To state it again, the Abomination will be perpetrated by Antichrist—not the False Prophet. Messiah ritually cleansed the Temple when He drove out the moneychangers. Antimessiah will defile it.
The Upper Room shrine is one of the most poorly attested of the ancient holy sites. The room shown in the photo above is Byzantine, and the most that can be said about it is that it may be built on or near the original site of the actual Upper Room. Even more dubiously, the ground floor of the same building is also said to sit on the tomb of King David. This is way, way down the scale of likelihood!
Mt Zion, where the shrine is located, is not even “God’s holy mountain” at all! In Bible times, “Mt. Zion” referred to Mt. Moriah, where the First and Second Temples stood and where previously God directed Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. All Biblical references to Zion refer to Mt. Moriah. In Byzantine times, probably due to confusion, the name “Zion” became connected instead to the “Western Hill” area (the Upper City) between the Tyropoeon Valley and the Hinnom Valley. This area, as well as the Bezetha Hills to the north, were first built up by King Hezekiah, in order to accommodate a huge immigrant population from the region of Samaria.
Before I leave that subject, the so-called “Ten Lost Tribes” were never totally lost. After the conquest of the Northern tribes by Assyria, hordes of upper- and middle-class Jews were exiled to other Assyrian conquests. Many peasants were left behind to share the land with conquered peoples from elsewhere that were resettled there. Many of those intermarried to produce the mamser (“bastard”) Samaritan population later despised in Judea. But shortly before the Assyrian conquest, many well-to-do northerners fled to Judea. The size of Jerusalem doubled as a result of that influx. In the First Century, this region was populated largely by aristocratic Sadducees and Roman officials—hardly a holy mountain!
Contrary to the famous, controversial claim by the late Jerry Falwell, Antichrist will not be Jewish, in my understanding—but the False Prophet will be. I base this on my strong belief that in prophecy, “the sea” usually, if not always, refers to the masses of non-Jewish people surrounding the Holy lands, and “the Land” refers to the lands given by God to His people. Antichrist is “the beast from the sea”, and the False Prophet is “the beast from the land.” To my knowledge, no Pope has ever been Jewish!
Reading in the Pope as the False Prophet, I’m sure, comes easily because Premillennialists have long assumed that the “Great Whore” of Revelation is the Catholic Church, or some form of apostate Christianity. Catholicism seems to fit the metaphor because to Protestants it incorporates many syncretistic rituals and beliefs. On the other hand, history now suggests another possible identity of the Harlot of Revelation: Islam. Militant Islam is a whorish religion in that it insists on an illicit union between false religion and the state, and I believe it to now be a far more powerful entity than Catholicism or the apostate Church.
That is not to suggest that the False Prophet will be a Muslim. Early in his regime, Antichrist will cozy up to all religions, but his own religion, and later the only one allowed, will be worship of him. The False Prophet will ultimately be a prophet of only that one religion, which will probably have little or no liturgy or theology. He will be more of a chief of staff or press secretary by then.
Finally, I am puzzled by the outrage in the article. Surely God’s plan is the best plan! Why not say, with the Apostle John,
[20] He which testifieth these things saith, “Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.” —Revelation 22:20 (KJV)
In a recent post, The Hijacking of Creationism, I discussed the currently obligatory conservative Christian view of why the earth appears to be billions of years old when traditional interpretations of Genesis 1 say it is only about 6,000 years old. I expressed my misgivings about that explanation, which proposes that all or certainly most of the appearance of age is due to damage to the earth’s crust caused by torrential rains and upheavals associated with the Genesis Flood. I also expressed doubts about the qualifications of Henry Morris, popularizer of the Flood Theory.
I do believe in the historicity of the Genesis Flood itself, but I don’t believe that the best explanation of how God brought this judgement about (see Fountains of the Deep, an earlier post) would have caused the level of devastation that Flood Theory requires.
As recapitulation of my own technical and professional qualifications: I am not a geologist, but I am well-trained in relevant aspects of geology. In a long career as a petroleum engineer, I worked extensively with and/or in place of geologists.
There are several sub-fields of petroleum engineering, and I have worked most of them. For most of my tenure with both large and small companies, both as an employee and as a consultant, I served as a petroleum reservoir engineer. As such I have had to be intimately familiar with all aspects of stratigraphy (rock layering), including rock and fluid properties, strata deposition mechanisms and deformations, fluid saturations and flow mechanisms, and, for diagnostic purposes, subsurface electrical and radioactivity profiles. As a well-site drilling engineer, I have examined rock cores and bit cuttings, electrical logs, pressure and flow tests, and more, from the surface to more than a mile deep. As a production engineer, I have observed how both productive and non-productive rock strata behave under a wide variety of external disturbances. In short, I probably know more about rock layers and how they behave than most geologists in non-petroleum fields.
One way to solve the age problem is to simply say, “What’s the problem? God simply spoke everything into existence exactly the way we would have seen it in 4004 BC!” Now, I don’t doubt for an instant that Almighty God is capable of just such a mighty act but just because He can, does that mean that He did? Observation suggests that He did not. To borrow a phrase from 1 Cor. 14:33, God is not the author of confusion, so why would His creation be so complex and appear so tremendously old, if it is not? Just to fool scientists and throw people off the track? I don’t think so!
Several years ago, before the advent of smartphones, I set out to make the 22-minute drive from my home to Belton, Missouri, where I was taking a semester of Theology at a Bible College. The topic of the day was to be Creation, and I knew that my professor was a proponent of Flood Theory. On the way I decided to pull out my microcassette recorder and list as many geological phenomena as I could think of, before I got there, that I know cannot be explained by the flood. I’ve since lost the list, but I recall most of what was on it. Here are some of the key items (in no particular order), with my reasoning added:
“Clastics” are the small, sometimes microscopic, rock fragments formed by “weathering” of larger fragments or massive rock formations. “Erosion” is the process by which clastics are subsequently moved from place to place and deposited in broad areas by the force of moving water, wind, glaciation, volcanic action, or simple gravity. When these clastic “sediments” become fused together over long periods of time by heat, pressure or chemical action, they become the sedimentary rock strata that we see today. My focus here is on the fragments themselves, not the strata.
Weathering of solid, non-sedimentary rocks like granite is generally not due primarily to frictional erosive flow in stream beds as most people think, but rather is caused by expansion/contraction cycles. Perhaps the most important of such processes, often called “frost wedging“, occurs when water enters small cracks and pores in the rock, freezes, expands, and wedges the openings larger. Over many alternate cycles of freezing and thawing, the two sides of the wedged rock can completely separate. Plant growth in these opening can accelerate the wedging. Another very common process that weathers rock is “exfoliation“, which occurs as the surface of a rock heats and cools more rapidly than the interior, causing layers near the surface to flake off.
The so-called “Split Rock of Horeb” is an archaeological fraud, but it illustrates both frost wedging and exfoliation. The large split and the rocks at its base are examples of wedging, and both the Split Rock itself and the foreground rocks show extensive exfoliation. From Google Earth.
Eventually, weathered rock fragments can become small enough to be transported by erosion. As they tumble along, they will be further broken up as they knock into other fragments, a process called “saltation“. Roiling water from the Genesis Flood could have redistributed loose fragments—soil, dirt, pebbles, and even larger rock—and further broken and shaped some of these fragments, but it could not, in a span of only 40 days, have caused any significant erosion of solid rock, even if heavily laden with abrasive silt. Nor could the Flood account for the rounding and blunting that we typically see in sand grains and many other clastics. The Flood, as cataclysmic as it was, simply did not last long enough or provide the temperature swings or friction surfaces needed to account for the clastic structure we see.
Can I prove this? No, but it is my professionalopinion, and Scripture has nothing to say on the process. Scientific studies could be done to prove the feasibility (or not!), but I haven’t seen any such research. The relevant discipline to conduct such studies is called “rock mechanics“, and in fact rock mechanics was the focus of my own master’s thesis.
Sedimentary rock strata sometimes extend laterally for long distances—often hundreds, or even thousands, of square miles which, strangely, Flood Theory enthusiasts seem to regard as proof of their point. In general, the strata tend to be mostly homogeneous, with few random impurities indicating uneven mixing with other rock types during deposition. Furthermore, the boundaries between layers tend to be crisp and well-defined. A sandstone, for example, does not normally grade into a shale or a limestone.
These characteristics are the opposite of what one would expect of sediments transported by a violent flood. During the rain, and afterwards as the water receded, any large or dense rocks transported would quickly have sunk to the bottom, followed by smaller and less dense rocks, and finally silt. The final result would be a single, deep, turbidity layer, grading from heavy, dense rock at the bottom, to lighter clastics at the top. Sorting would be by size and weight, not by rock type.
Limestone is formed from the skeletal material of sea life. A critter dies and sinks to the bottom. Its soft tissues decay, and what remains calcifies. Over time, enough of this material accumulates to form beds that fuse into massive rock strata. In a Flood scenario, we should expect to see calcified remains more or less distributed throughout the single, thick stratum discussed above. Of course, we do see some distribution of calcified fossil remains in all rock types, but additionally we see massive continuous beds of relatively pure limestone interbedded with sandstones and shales and other rock types. I simply don’t see how this can be accounted for without repeated flooding over long intervals of time. Almighty God could have simply spoken it into being in this configuration, or He could have directed the Flood waters and upheavals in such a way as to “stack it” to His own specifications, but why? Only to fool us into discounting our own senses? If I could see anything in Scripture to make me think this way, I would accept it. But I simply don’t!
Let’s say that the cataclysmic geologic activity associated with such a flood caused mountains to cyclically rise and recede in a very short time span and caused rock and debris to wash into the low areas, burying forests and animal life forms. If the up-thrust rock was composed differently from place to place, couldn’t this alternating rise and fall account for the rock strata that we observe? No! Such a violent scenario would cause mixing of the materials, not sorting and stratification, particularly since most of the rock strata are composed of very fine-grained clastics that are themselves a product of weathering and subsequent erosion over long periods of time.
Geologists have mapped the “normal sequence” of rock strata—the so-called “geologic column“—at many locations throughout the world. At any particular location, it is not at all uncommon to find that various members of the normal column are missing, since stratum thicknesses vary naturally from place to place, all the way down to zero; but the overall sequence is nevertheless still normally recognizable. It is also not terribly uncommon to find regions where the sequence is exactly reversed; in other words where we find the apparent age of the rocks decreasing with depth. This is evident, for example, in some of the rocks exposed by the Grand Canyon. Genesis Flood theorists are fond of chuckling at the irony they see in this. “Haha, geologists, the joke’s on you! Not only is the sequence wrong, but it is exactly opposite from what you expected!” In reality, this is easy to explain. Tectonic forces cause deformation and bending of entire sequences of strata. In nature we find them tilted to all angles, including completely flipped over. This is the same thing that happens when you use your fingers to push the left and right edges of a newspaper towards each other. The difference is that solid rock is more or less rigid, unlike newsprint. Such deformations over the course of days or even years or decades would cause the rock to crumble and the strata to disintegrate. Over geologic time, however, “solid” rock tends to undergo “plastic” deformation. In geologic (not meteorological) time, it can flow like a viscous fluid—in fact, exactly like a glacier.
An unconformity in the region of the Chimborazo volcano, Ecuador. The lower strata were deposited horizontally, uplifted to the right, and then after a period of erosion, the upper strata were laid horizontally across the exposed edge. Subsequent uplifting was to the left. From GeologyIn.com.
A related effect that we frequently see over geologic time is that strata get “tilted” to some angle by those same tectonic forces, then the tilting action stops and weathering/erosion cuts horizontally across exposed edges of the strata. Flowing water initially brings debris down from the highlands and cuts river channels in those transported debris fields, but then over time there is a levelling effect, forming the broad, flat plains between mountain ranges and the coastal peneplains. Still later, deposition may form new strata in horizontal beds lying across the eroded edges of the older rock. The interface between the canted strata and the horizontal strata is called a “discontinuity” or “unconformity“. “Crossbedding” usually refers to unconformities in aeolian sands (see below).
Crossbedded aeolian sand deposits at Antelope Canyon, near Page, Arizona. From imgix.net.
Not all rock strata are deposited by water. Sometimes wind blowing over long periods of time can deposit clastic materials and form rock strata. These “aeolian” deposits have a very distinctive structure that is readily recognizable to geologists. Fossilized desert sand dunes are a subset of this group. I see no possible way that the Genesis Flood could account for these.
Bridal Veil Falls, Yosemite National Park. Water spilling from a hanging valley into the glacial valley that cut across it.
Still other features are formed only by glaciers flowing slowly and plastically downhill. Flowing water cuts V-shaped valleys. Glaciers scoop out large and obvious U-shaped valleys, like using a giant spade. “Hanging valleys” are formed when one glacier melts away, leaving behind its characteristic U-shaped valley, and many thousands of years later a new glacier flows by at an angle to the first.
As glaciers flow, the debris that they scoop out of the canyons strings out to the side like snowbanks formed by plows after a storm. The debris itself is called “till” and it is tumbled and polished into a form that is easily recognizable. The so-called Split Rock of Horeb, in the first figure above, is a “glacial erratic” (a large, out of context rock pushed ahead of a glacier) sitting on a till deposited by a glacier during the last ice age, in what is now northwest Saudi Arabia. The ridges of till that I have described are called “lateral moraines.” The Genesis Flood could not in any way account for the effects of glaciation. Glacial ice, like rock strata, would crumble if it were deformed and forced to try and flow over a short time span.
Salt, gypsum and a number of other deposits are laid down as a result of evaporation over long periods of time. Water simply cannot hold enough of these materials to form, in a short time span, the deep beds of such “evaporites” often found.
I don’t think that God set out to destroy or remake the entire planet with the Flood! His purpose was to show fallen mankind after the Flood that He would not tolerate their evil ways forever. He saved Noah and his family. He saved animal species that could not swim. He did not destroy plant species or swimming animals, because they could survive the limited time span of the Flood. There was no reason to break up land masses, nor was there a mechanism for doing so, because “the fountains of the deep“, I believe, were the volcanic vents along the mid-oceanic ridges, and the rains were spawned by out-venting from those. So, far from being smashed by raging torrents and mudslides, the wicked were destroyed by rising waters, like in a huge bathtub. Similarly, the waters receded by means of suction into tectonic plate subduction zones, on a smaller scale, a proven and well-understood process.
Another important question not answered by the Flood Theory is, how would the Flood account for the apparent (and in my opinion, demonstrable) 13.7-billion-year age of the universe?
Most scientists, certainly, and probably most theologians agree that “theology is about God”, and “science is about purely natural and self-sustaining processes.” As someone who has been passionately interested in both theology and science from an early age, my view is that there is an unavoidable overlap. Both disciplines, in a very real sense, share the same goal—uncovering truth about the universe around us—and both disciplines come from the same source—the God who created and maintains the universe.
you can’t fully understand the universe without understanding the Designer who built it and instituted the natural laws that govern its existence, and you can’t fully understand God without understanding the environment He created for His creatures.
I am contending here that science is worth listening to and not simply dismissing as an enemy of faith. Most of my readers are intelligent Christian Believers but are neither scientists nor theologians. To those, I pose the question:
Can we only believe what our eyes show us if it conforms to what we have been taught? Can we not even consider that there are “mysteries” (Paul’s term) that can only be understood with the passage of time? We even have a theological term for that: “progressive revelation.”
Romans 1:19-20 (ESV) 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them [the ungodly and unrighteous], because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.
If God has revealed Himself in nature to the ungodly, then who are we as believers to say that there is no benefit to us in that same revelation? I live by the principle that God gave me “eyes to see and ears to hear”. If my senses seem to conflict with what I have been taught to believe, then I must question both my senses and my beliefs. That doesn’t happen often, because I’ve had pretty good teachers over the decades. But not everything in the Bible is crystal clear. Most trained pastors and theologians subscribe to a particular “hermeneutic“, or system of principles for exegesis, i.e., interpretation of Scripture. See, for example, the book, Basic Bible Interpretation, by Roy B. Zuck.
I am a Biblical “literalist”, but that doesn’t mean I take every last word as literal. Does anyone believe that Jesus’ parables were literally true stories? A parable, by definition, is a made-up story designed to teach a principle. Did Peter see a real sheet containing real animals? I don’t think so, it was a vision, not reality, and was meant to teach him a lesson about people, not about food. Is “three days and three nights” exactly 72 hours? No, that’s a well-attested Hebrew figure of speech which Biblical Jews would have understood meant part of one day, all of a second, and part of a third—which includes only two nights, by the way. The “evil” or “single” eye of Matthew 6:22, is a figure of speech, an idiom, about stinginess. Did Jesus promise me a mansion in Heaven? No that’s both a translation issue (“mansion” vs. “dwelling place”) and a misapplication of Hebrew wedding imagery, which Jesus’ hearers would have immediately recognized as such and not understood as a real estate promise (see “Jesus and Hebrew Wedding Imagery“). Will the meek inherit the earth? No, that’s a quote of Psalm 37:11 where David was clearly speaking poetically of the prophesied return of Israel (the meek) to the Promised Land. Are there helicopters in Revelation? Maybe so, maybe no, but everyone agrees the wording there could be symbolic.
On the other hand, did Jesus convert water into wine, and did He resurrect from the dead? Emphatically, yes! Science can’t demonstrate the possibility of either, but neither can they be disproved, and the facts are fundamental to my belief system. The same with Adam and Eve, the Genesis Flood, the Sea of Suf (Red/Reed Sea) crossing, manna from heaven, and numerous other phenomena that some folks can’t believe.
On yet another hand, was the Ark a ship, as some would have you believe is unarguable fact? Not in my opinion (see “Ships, Boats, Floats and Arks“), but the story itself is true, nevertheless. Did the Genesis flood change the entire structure of the earth’s crust? Not in my opinion (see “Fountains of the Deep“). There is no scriptural support for this simplistic theory, and there are better explanations for the apparent age of the earth. In my professional opinion, there are a number of geological phenomena, that simply could not have been caused by either a local flood or a general, worldwide flood (see Geology a Flood Cannot Explain). Nor could a flood account for the appearance of age in the extraterrestrial cosmos!
In my view nothing in the Bible is in any way flawed—ever—but the Bible is written to convey facts about God Himself, and about God’s Will as expressed through Theology.
Information the Bible offers about human or natural history, or about scientific principles, is only incidental to the goal of explaining and glorifying God and His Will, and in my opinion is not intended to be exhaustive or fully explained. Furthermore, the human instruments who penned scripture, and the ancient audience for which it was initially penned, were historically and scientifically naïve and would have had absolutely no perspective from which to correctly receive sophisticated explanations about the universe around them (see Genesis 1:1–5, Day 1).
Sometimes science presents us with observations that are very compelling but seemingly out of sync with our assumptions based on traditional interpretations of scripture. For example, the following KJV references are all from poetic scriptures (see how literary genre influences proper interpretation, in The Implication of Genre in Job, Ezekiel and Genesis) praising God for His power and greatness and for the stability and security of the planet He created for us:
For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast. —Psalm 33:9
the world also is stablished, that it cannot be moved. —Psalm 93:1c
the world also shall be established that it shall not be moved: —Psalm 96:10b
Who laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed [ESV: “moved”] for ever. —Psalm 104:5
the world also shall be stable, that it be not moved. —1 Chronicles 16:30b
and, behold, all the earth sitteth still, and is at rest. —Zechariah 1:11
These verses “prove beyond any shadow of doubt” that the earth is totally immobile, and the center around which the universe rotates! But no, thanks to progressive revelation, we now interpret those poetic scriptures figuratively, in ways that conform to observation. At some point in the course of using our God-given senses and intelligence, it may occasionally become necessary to thus reexamine certain scriptures to see if there is something that we may have missed, or a conclusion we reached in error because in the past “it seemed to make more sense” than any alternative view. Certainly, I’m not talking about giving up fundamental faith issues, but I am suggesting that we should be more astute about recognizing what is fundamental and what is merely tradition. To my thinking, scripture is clear that God is the Creator. That is a fundamental of my faith, but the brevity of the Genesis 1 account and its wording in the Hebrew makes me much less confident in the traditional interpretations.
I similarly question whether Genesis 2 is a recapitulation of Day 6 in Genesis 1, or a separate creation event. What is fundamental to me is that Adam and Eve were real people, created directly by God, and placed into a real paradise where they really sinned (see Exploring the Garden of Eden). Noah, too, was a real person and all subsequent humans are descended from him. Without these fundamentals, my whole concept of soteriology is flawed, and my faith is in vain.
The dual advents of Jesus were a mystery to all Believers until Jesus died, and His followers had to reexamine ancient scriptures and develop new interpretations of passages that were not as clear and final as had been thought previously.
I seriously doubt key claims of theories of biological evolution, for reasons that I may go into in a future post.
At the same time, I reject “Young Earth” hypotheses about the way God created the non-organic universe. I believe that Earth is some 4.54 billion years old (give or take a half million), and the universe nearly 13.8 billion. I’ll leave it to future posts to explain how I reconcile this with the “Genesis account”, which I refuse to explain away as mere symbolism. To reiterate, I believe in a literal, worldwide Genesis Flood, but I reject the theory that it accounts for the present geology of the earth. Not just because “scientists say so”, but because I personally understand the scientific principles involved and how they apply. And because God gave me eyes to see!
Please dismiss the idea that “the theory of evolution” has anything to do with the development of the universe. “Evolution”, as I use the term, is about biological processes and “natural selection”, neither of which have anything whatsoever to do with star formation or the origin of the Solar system. If the formation of a star from interstellar gas and dust is “evolution”, then I guess the formation of a sinkhole after a water main break must also be called evolution.
Similarities between Science and Theology
Both disciplines deal in theory. Christians are fond of saying that, “Evolution is just a theory, not an established fact.” Not a “Law.” When I was a kid, the “Scientific Method” recognized three discrete levels of understanding: hypothesis, theory, and law. Many people brought up in that era see the word “theory” and assume that this is something unproven and tentative. That is no longer the case, linguistically. Reality has blurred the boundaries between theory and law. Many things that were once considered “law” are now recognized to have conditions, or limits. “Newton’s Laws”, for example, are now accepted as useful approximations under certain conditions, but under others, they have to be replaced by Relativistic principles, and even Relativity now sometimes must give way to Quantum Mechanics. So, even though biological evolution is still called a “theory”, most biologists are totally convinced of its truth, or at least that it is a valid working principle. Insisting that it is “theory” and not “fact” is, in this era, an empty argument. In the same way, theological principles must be considered theoretical up to a point, because we aren’t God! We simply cannot have a perfect understanding of scripture.
Both disciplines have an infallible basis. What?! Theology is at heart based on the Bible, which we believe to be inerrant and infallible. That is axiomatic to our beliefs. Most sciences, too—not so much biology, but certainly cosmology (the study of how the universe developed from the time of the “Big Bang”)—have a mathematical foundation, and math is an “exact science.” Math is the inerrant “scripture” of science, and it, too, was authored by God. It originated with God, it is absolute, and much of it is very well understood by human mathematicians.
Both disciplines have elements that are subject to interpretation. Some branches of math, like Probability and Statistics, can be erroneously interpreted and wrong conclusions drawn; and proven valid equations can sometimes be applied incorrectly to observation. But the same can be said about scripture. Sometimes scripture can be misinterpreted or misapplied. Again, we are not God!
How could corrupt High Priests like Annas and Caiaphas enter into God’s presence in the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur? Why didn’t they die in the attempt?
The short answer is that God did not demand personal purity for this function—only ritual purity!
Annas and Caiaphas were certainly corrupt, but they were not the most corrupt of high priests by a long shot. They were political appointees whose loyalties were divided between Rome, the nation of Israel, Torah and their own ambitions. Among earlier high priests, some bought their appointments, and others killed for them. Some were motivated by absolutely nothing other than personal gain. Though some high priests were clearly “better” than others, none was free from some degree of corruption. Indeed, if the high priestly office required total purity, no human being would have survived an entry into the Holy of Holies. More importantly, their ministrations on behalf of the people would have been of no effect. In fact, no priestly sacrifice or function could work!
The essence of Jewish and Christian existence is that, in our fallenness and corruption, nothing we do on our own can meet God’s standards.
Sometimes, the best we can do is to follow a check list. Leviticus 16 describes an elaborate set of ritual preparations that the cohen hagadol, or high priest, had to accomplish before entering the Most Holy Place (the Holy of Holies). If he correctly accomplished each and every step in exactly the way scripture required, then he would survive his encounter with God and would atone for the sins of the nation for another year, no matter how much evil was in his heart. If his preparations erred in any manner whatsoever, he would die behind the veil and atonement would fail. We have no evidence in scripture or history that any high priest did die in the Holy of Holies. That is not too surprising given the care that each high priest and his attendants took to assure that no mistakes were made.
This once again illustrates a truth that we see over and over again in scripture: that God is able to, and completely willing to, accomplish His purpose even at the hands of fallen people.
The term “atonement” is used over and over in the Old Testament to describe the purpose for and result of the Sinaitic (or Mosaic) sacrificial system. Many Christian theologians extrapolate the Old Testament concept into the New Testament setting and speak of the “atoning work of Christ on the cross.” This usage, however, obscures the very real difference between Old Testament atonement and New Testament expiation, propitiation and reconciliation. Atonement, in the Biblical sense, is a temporary covering up of sin, or guilt. A “stay of execution”, so to speak. Expiation means “to extinguish guilt incurred.” Propitiation is roughly the same, but with the additional dimension of appeasement of anger. Reconciliation means to “reestablish a close relationship” between two entities or concepts. Expiation and propitiation accurately describe what the death of Messiah did, while reconciliation, an accounting term, describes the result: our relationship with God is brought into balance. Cause and effect. Sin is paid for in full and permanently expunged from the record, God is appeased, and our relationship with Him is restored.
The Hebrew terms for “atonement” are variations from the root kaphar, which all carry the idea of “covering”; for example, covering a ship’s hull with bitumen to prevent leakage, or covering a stain in a hardwood floor with a rug. Orthodox Jewish males today cover their heads with kippot, the skullcaps or yarmulkes (Yiddish) that we have all seen. The “lid” of the Arc of the Covenant was called the kapporah, and it, too, is a covering. Atonement for sin, then, becomes a means of covering, or obscuring, it from sight, without actually expunging or removing it. The guilt remains, but God has provided a means of temporarily “sweeping it under the rug” pending permanent expungement by means of Messiah’s crucifixion.
Aside from references to the Jewish feast, the Day of Atonement, the words atone, or atonement appear seldom or not at all in most translations of the New Testament. In the Septuagint (LXX, the Greek translation of the Old Testament used by Paul, translated, apparently, by 70 Jewish scholars in Elephantine, Egypt in the 2nd Century, BC), the word “atonement” is rendered as hilasterion, because there apparently was not a Greek equivalent for “atonement”. Where the feast day is intended, the Greek hilasterion is thus also used in the New Testament for “atonement”, or even for “Mercy Seat”, referring to the covering of the Ark of the Covenant; otherwise, hilasterion is correctly translated as expiation or propitiation. Where the Greek katallagē is used, the proper translation is reconciliation.
Though most New Testament translations are generally okay in this respect, Christian writers and speakers continue to refer to phrases like, “the atoning blood of Christ”, which is a theological non-sequitur. Atonement is decidedly not what His crucifixion accomplished! The confusion arises because most Christians believe that the sacrifices were means of salvation under the Jewish Torah. But this is taught nowhere in scripture. Atonement by means of the sacrificial system is never said to make anybody “at one with Christ” or with God. Atonement is not “at-one-ment” as many have claimed. Salvation is permanent, whereas atonement is only temporary.
In discussing the superior sacrifice of Jesus, Heb 10:4 states that
Hebrews 10:4 (CJB) [4] …it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins.
Many passages in the Tanach (Old Testament) also discuss the inadequacy of sacrifice in the presence of a sinful heart. For example
1 Samuel 15:22 (CJB) [22] Sh’mu’el [Samuel]said, “Does ADONAI take as much pleasure in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying what ADONAI says? Surely obeying is better than sacrifice, and heeding orders than the fat of rams.
Psalms 40:7 (CJB) 7 Sacrifices and grain offerings you don’t want; burnt offerings and sin offerings you don’t demand. Instead, you have given me open ears;
Psalms 51:18 (CJB) 18 For you don’t want sacrifices, or I would give them; you don’t take pleasure in burnt offerings.
Proverbs 15:8 (CJB) [8] ADONAI detests the sacrifices of the wicked but delights in the prayers of the upright.
Isaiah 1:11 (CJB) [11] “Why are all those sacrifices offered to me?” asks ADONAI. “I’m fed up with burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fattened animals! I get no pleasure from the blood of bulls, lambs and goats!
Jeremiah 6:20 (CJB) [20] What do I care about incense from Sh’va [Sheba] or sweet cane from a distant land? Your burnt offerings are unacceptable, your sacrifices don’t please me.”
Hosea 6:6 (CJB) [6] For what I desire is mercy, not sacrifices, knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.
Hosea 8:13 (CJB) [13] They offer me sacrifices of flesh and eat them, but ADONAI does not accept them. Now he will recall their crimes and punish their sins— they will return to Egypt.
Hosea 9:4 (CJB) [4] They will not pour out wine offerings to ADONAI; they will not be pleasing to him. Their sacrifices will be for them like mourners’ food— everyone eating it will be polluted. For their food will be merely to satisfy their appetite; it will not come into the house of ADONAI.
Why did God not want the sacrifices that He, Himself, had demanded? Just as we believe that baptism and the Lord’s Supper are a response of obedienceby someone already saved, and useless to the unsaved, so were the sacrifices a response of obedience. Salvation then, as now, was “by grace through faith.” Sacrifice had no efficacy except to those who were already the recipients of God’s saving grace. The purpose of the sacrifices was to ritually “cover”, or hide from God’s eyes, the guilt of the sinner who, by his obedient sacrifice, was “making amends.”
But notice this:
Every single one of the atoning sacrifices was for incidental, or unintentional, sin; in other words, for sins committed in ignorance, accidentally, or under duress. There was absolutely no means of sacrificial atonement for willful sin—except for God’s grace! On Yom Kippur, the “Day of Atonement” the Cohen HaGadol (high priest) would sacrifice a bull for his own incidental sin and a goat for the incidental sin of the people. Once the problem of incidental sin had been covered up, he would then lay his hands on the forehead of another goat, the scapegoat, symbolically transferring to it all further, willful, sin. The scapegoat would be led “outside the camp”, i.e., away from the people and out of God’s presence. Thus, the nation’s sin was allegorically returned to Azazel, the chief of demons.
This post was first published over 10 years ago but recently got a major overhaul. First, because my own style has changed a bit over the years; but also, because I’ve changed my mind about one related issue, which I’ll discuss below. This is a good time for an update because it is now the middle of the Hebrew month Elul, and that is the temporal setting of my main topic here, the Fall Feasts.
I started this edit by setting a time frame for Jesus’ First Advent, which I date in the following short table. Here I have used the Gregorian calendar for the year, because that is more identifiable to most of us, but I’m taking the month and day from the Hebrew calendar, because annual events are Biblically fixed according to that standard and are different every year by the Gregorian and earlier Julian calendars.
Event
Age
Hebrew Date
Gregorian Year
Birth
–
Tishri 15
4 BC
Baptism
about 30 years
Elul 1
AD 26
Crucifixion
about 33 yrs., 6 mos.
Nisan 14
AD 30
Here are some of the factors I considered in composing this table:
The Biblical feast days commemorate important Jewish historical events, celebrate the annual agricultural cycle, and prophesy about Messiah’s life on earth, in both of His advents.
I am convinced that the Jewish principal feasts, as commanded in Leviticus 23, provide a totally reliable outline of important events in Jesus’ life, as shown in the last column of Figure 1, above. Events highlighted there in peach occurred during His first advent, on the actual feast days shown. Events highlighted in blue will occur during His second advent, again on the actual feast days shown.
I’m very confident that Jesus’ birth was on Tishri 15, the first day of the Feast of Tabernacles, Sukkoth. Not in December, on a date with absolutely no Scriptural support (but with a pagan connotation!); but rather in a September/October timeframe corresponding to Jewish celebration of the time that God previously “tabernacled” with His people during their 40 years of wilderness wandering. With Jesus’ birth, once again God was living among His people.
The year of Jesus’ birth has been disputed during my entire lifetime. There are always unresolved arguments about when Herod died, when Quirinus was governor of Cilicia/Syria, and what year a lunar eclipse hit the region, all of which are applicable. The most commonly cited estimates that I’ve seen place Jesus’ birth in 4 BC, though dates ranging from 1 through 6 BC are also commonly mentioned. I’m sticking with 4 BC here, because it fits well with the other two dates in my table.
Luke 3:23 states that Jesus was “about thirty years of age” when He began His ministry. Fall of AD 26 is about thirty years after the autumn of 4 BC. In fact, if His ministry began on Yom Kippur (see below), and that was the last day of His 40-day “wilderness fast and temptation”, then He was just five days shy of 30 years old.
His baptism by John was 40 days before Tishri 10, which is the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. I’ll explain the 40-day offset below, but it culminates with Jesus on the pinnacle of the Temple, defying Satan, on Yom Kippur, in full view of many thousands of worshippers on the plaza below.
Fig. 2: The late Alec Garrard, facing “south”, posing in his backyard shed model of Herod’s Temple. The parapet in the lower right corner overlooks the Kidron Valley, and as the highest point on the Temple Mount walls, it is thought by many to be the “pinnacle” mentioned in Scripture. I personally suspect that the somewhat lower parapet to the left, more commonly known as the Place of Trumpeting, might be the actual pinnacle of Scripture, since it is far more visible from the streets below. Photo from The Miniature Engineering Craftsmanship Museum.
His crucifixion was on Nisan 15, the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, Yom ha-Bikkurim, not on Nisan 14, the day of the sacrifices.
The year of Jesus’ crucifixion, shown here as AD 30, was calculated by me, using NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association) New Moon Tables, which were prepared with historic ocean tides in mind. Every published Biblical chronology that I’m aware of puts the crucifixion in AD 33, but they are all based on an incorrect interpretation that insists He was crucified on Nisan 14. With a correct understanding of the timings of Passover Week which (thanks to my traditional presuppositions) it frankly took me many years to achieve, it is clear that Jesus was crucified on Nisan 15.
9/5/2023 addition – When I was working on my August update last week, I completely forgot to add one other crucial piece of evidence:
1 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, 2 during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness. —Luke 3:1-2 ESV
Leaving Tiberias until last, here are the tenure years of the leaders mentioned (all are 1st Century AD): Pilate, 26–36; Herod (Antipas), 4–39; Philip, 4–34; Lysanius, unknown; and Caiaphas, 18–37. Annas was High Priest during the period 6–15 but was the real power in the Temple during the tenure of Caiaphas, his son-in-law, 18–37.
For the purpose of dating the text, only Tiberias‘ rule is useful. Many historians and Biblical commentators date Tiberias’ accession to the time of Augustus’ death. That puts the timing of Jesus’ baptism in the year AD 29, which would pose a problem for my proposed dating. I don’t think AD 29 is correct, because it was common for many, possibly most, ancient rulers and their chroniclers to ambitiously include years of coregency in citing tenure of rule. Tiberias was coregent with Augustus starting in either AD 11 or 12. AD 11 fits perfectly with my AD 26 date for Jesus’ baptism.
I find that I am not alone in recognizing this discrepancy. The well-respected commentary Jamieson, Faucett & Brown, for example, states that:
the fifteenth year of Tiberius — reckoning from the period when he was admitted, three years before Augustus’ death, to a share of the empire [results in a date for the events of Matthew 3:1 of] about the end of the year of Rome 779, or about four years before the usual reckoning.
“The usual reckoning” is AD 30. The traditional date for the founding of Rome was 753 BC, which makes “the year of Rome 779” equivalent to AD 26.
Please refer to Figures 3 and 4, above. The Passover sacrifices were killed on Nisan 14, then consumed during the Seder, which began that evening at dusk. Jesus and His 12 apostles celebrated the Seder until late, as customary, then joined with the Hallel singing outside at midnight, and afterwards walked to Gethsemane, where Jesus was arrested. His trials were conducted during the early morning of Nisan 15, and He was crucified and buried that day. That was on a Friday, and the only year within a reasonable range with a Friday on Nisan 15 was AD 30. I am very confident that this scenario is correct!
Fig. 5: An April 2024 calendar showing parallel Hebrew dates on the right. This clearly demonstrates that the 8-day Passover celebration (7 days in Israel) begins on Nisan 15. Jewish Time®, by Calendar Maven
Most scholars think that Jesus’ ministry lasted around 3½ years, based on the number of Passovers He seems to have attended during that time. I agree.
This month shall be to you the head of the months; to you it shall be the first of the months of the year. —Exodus 12:2 (The Complete Jewish Tanach)
Nisan 1, in the Spring, is the Jewish religious New Year. Jews today, though, celebrate the civil new year, Rosh Hashanah, which is six months later, on Tishri 1.
Most of the modern world celebrates the new year with revelry. Not so among devout Jews in 1st Century Judea, because Tishri 1 is also the date of Yom Teruah, the Day of Trumpets. This important feast day heralds God’s judgment of His chosen people for their deeds, both good and bad, committed during the preceding year.
As such, the mood during the entire ten-day period through Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, on Tishri 10, is somber and introspective. There is prayer, fasting, ritual immersion (baptism for purification), and general spiritual misery and mourning. No weddings or other celebrations are permitted.
Once Yom Kippur has passed, the mood shifts. There is spiritual relief, and a 5-day period of relaxed preparation, followed by the joyous eight-day celebration of Sukkoth, the Feast of Tabernacles.
In the rest of this post, I will concentrate on two of the fall feasts in particular: The Day of Trumpets and the Day of Atonement. These two feasts, and the 10-day span of time connecting them, is known as Yamim Noraim, the ten “Days of Awe”. This somber period, as described above, is devoted to sincere individual and national confession of sins, and to t’shuvah, or repentance.
Rosh Hashanah, also known as Yom Teruah (The Day of Trumpets), is the Jewish day for regathering. Jews believed that, on this day every year, God divided His people into three groups according to their faithfulness over the preceding year. One group was the “wholly righteous”, whose names would certainly be written in the Book of Life. A second group was the “wholly wicked”, who would be written into the Book of Death. The final group was comprised of “those in between”, whose fate would be sealed by the quality of their t’shuvah over the next ten days, with their final judgment reserved until Yom Kippur.
What prompted me to revise this post was that, in the original version, I said of the above viewpoint, “this doctrine is certainly not Biblical”; however, I have mostly changed my mind about the books, though I think that the Jewish perspective on them may be a bit skewed. I have recently been introduced to the works of Michael S. Heiser, and what he called the “Deuteronomy 32 worldview” (see Gods and Demons). He addressed this subject in ways that I had not previously considered.
There are, in fact, eight New Testament references, mostly in Revelation, to the “book of life“, and many Old Testament and intertestamental references to heavenly “books” and “tablets” that are clearly connected. I assume that these conceptual records are metaphorical, considering that God is God, and doesn’t need a physical database to remember what He needs to remember. Heiser makes sense when he suggests that our sins are recorded in one book, and our salvation in another. If (and only if) we are not listed in the second, then we will be judged by what is recorded in the first. There may be a “book of death“, too, that renders some ineligible for salvation. Regarding the latter, see, for example:
[31] Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. —Matthew 12:31 (ESV)
Whether or not the doctrine of these books is valid, the fact that the holiday recognizes a separation of people from people is very significant since it prophetically depicts the regathering of God’s people on the coming day of Rapture:
[16] For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first… —1 Thessalonians 4:16 (KJV)
In light of 1 Thes 4:16, the blowing of the trumpet (actually, a shofar, or ram’s horn) on Yom Teruah is particularly interesting. The shofar (accompanied by metallic trumpets in Temple days) was blown at mid-morning after the morning (Shacharit) prayers, in three series of four distinctive notes: tekia (“blast”); shevarim (“broken notes”); teruah (“shout”—thought of as “the shout of an archangel”); and tekia gedolah (the “great blast”). The first series is tekia, shevarim, teruah, tekia, repeated three times. The second is tekia, shevarim, tekia, repeated three times. The final series is tekia, teruah, tekia, repeated three times, followed immediately by tekia gedolah, referred to in 1 Cor 15:52 as “the last trumpet”.
[52] in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. —1 Corinthians 15:52 (ESV) emphasis mine
Since long before Jesus’ day, the Days of Awe have, in practice, begun thirty days beforeYom Teruah, on the first day of the Jewish month Elul. T’shuvah (repentance) is much too important to put off until the last minute, so the Rabbis decided that forty full days should be devoted to it, rather than the ten required by Torah.
On Elul 1, Jews would flock to the mikvot (baptisteries) of the Temple and synagogues, and to the “living waters” of streams and rivers like the Yarden (Jordan), to immerse themselves for ritual purification. That would then be followed by forty days of prayer, fasting and introspection. In the years preceding AD 30, it seems that many had become preoccupied with the politics and woes of the Roman occupation, and such customs were being neglected. Into this scene stepped Yochanan, who we now call John the Baptizer, calling Jews to baptism and t’shuvah.
[13] Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him. [14] John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” [15] But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. [16] And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; [17] and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” —Matthew 3:13–17 (ESV)
I believe that the events of Mt 3:13-17, describing Jesus’ baptism and anointing by the Holy Spirit, took place on Elul 1, conforming to the current tradition. As to the year, I lean towards AD 26, as stated above. If that year is off, I’m still 100 percent sure of the Hebrew month and day.
Fig. 8: The Jordan River today, due east of Jerico. Scripture places Jesus’ baptism at Bethany on Jordan, no doubt referring to the east bank of the oxbow, close to the village. From Google Earth.
Though of course He was sinless, His baptism, followed by forty days of prayer and fasting, were consistent with and required by the customs of the season.
More importantly, the temptation and His response were theologically vital. Jesus was “the Second Adam” (see The Two Adams). The first was created sinless, but when tempted by the “lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life”, failed and brought sin to the world. The same tempter and same temptations came to Jesus in the wilderness: lust of the flesh (stones to bread); lust of the eyes (the kingdoms of the world); and pride of life (rescue by angels in the sight of all Israel). Jesus did not fail, and brought redemption to the world.
Matthew presents a different order for the temptation, which is not a problem because chronological order was not strictly important in the literature of the day, but I’m certain that “pride” was last in real time, as listed by Luke.
Interestingly, that placed Jesus on the Pinnacle of the Temple on Yom Kippur:
[9] Then he [the devil] took him to Yerushalayim, set him on the highest point [Greek pterugion, literally, a “wing” or “turret”] of the Temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, jump from here! [10] For the Tanakh [Old Testament] says [Psalm 91:11–12],
‘He will order his angels to be responsible for you and to protect you. [11] They will support you with their hands, so that you will not hurt your feet on the stones.’”
[12] Yeshua [Jesus] answered him, “It also says, ‘Do not put ADONAI your God to the test.’” [13] When the Adversary [Greek diabolos, literally, “accuser”] had ended all his testings, he let him alone until an opportune time. —Luke 4:9–13 (CJB)
While the Temple still stood, on Yom Kippurall the people gathered on the Temple Mount for the ritual sacrifices that would roll the sins of the truly repentant back for another year. Since there is no longer a Temple, and thus no legitimate place for blood sacrifices, the gatherings are now in the synagogues, and what is offered are “sacrifices of prayer.”
Most translations render pterugion as “pinnacle”, following the KJV. This is traditionally interpreted as the highest point on the Temple Mount or its surrounding walls, but I don’t think that this is warranted. It seems to me most likely that this is referring to the “place of trumpeting” (see Figure 2) which, by inference, was probably the parapet, or observation platform, from which the priests monitored the ritually vital sunrise and sunset every day. This high overlook was visible from the exterior streets below. If Jesus had accepted Satan’s temptation to throw Himself off and allow the angels to catch Him, all the Jewish world would have witnessed the destruction of His public ministry on the very day it began! Certainly, this was Satan’s plan!
I am forever thrilled at the beauty of God’s timing! I believe that many of the events connected with Jesus’ First and Second Advents actually occurred or will occur on the precise day of the Feast that pictures the event. Could it be that He will return for his Church at the exact moment of the “Last Trump” on the Feast of Trumpets (as God indeed said He would!), which is prophetic of the Rapture? Is it possible that He will return in judgment at the end of Tribulation on the Day of Atonement, the very day when God is thought to seal His judgment of His people? I am convinced it is so!
The Back of My Mind 