There's a certain poster here who claims to have definitive proof that Jesus's death was Erev Pesach on a Wednesday. He bases his claim on the research made by one Herbert W. Armstrong which can be viewed here: The Resurrection was not on Sunday - Herbert W Armstrong and here: Herbert W. Armstrong and His Radio Church of God—Part II: Did Christ Stay in the Grave Exactly 72 Hours?
and I quote from the first article:
With google I found this site: Jewish Calendar, Hebrew Date Converter, Holidays - hebcal.com
The site shows dates going back even before the year our fixed calendar came into play, which is pretty cool in itself.
The downside is what leads to my question: I'm not sure they take into account the fact that before the year 4119 (359 CE), the calendar wasn't fixed (and in fact they do write on site that before the year 1752 CE the date may not be accurate), as, according to another google search, Jesus's death took place somewhere between 30 CE to 36 CE.
Looking up Erev Pesach dates for those years, it comes to:
CE 30 – Wednesday
CE 31 – Monday
CE 32 – Monday
CE 33 – Friday
CE 34 – Monday
CE 35 – Monday
CE 36 – Friday
Which is all very nice, but all fits very well into the modern principle of "לא אד"ו ראש ולא בד"ו פסח" (which basically means that Rosh Hashanah can't come out on Sunday, Wednesday or Friday and Pesach can't come out on Monday, Wednesday or Friday) - in other words, the Hebcal seems to line up with our modern calendar rules. While in ancient times, months were announced based on new witnesses every month, so more-or-less every day of the year could fall upon any day of the week.
My question therefore is: Is there really any sort of way to know the day of the week of every date from the years before our calendar was set up? Is there some source that has the old calendars written down somewhere? Or is Armstrong's guess really just a guess?
and I quote from the first article:
And the Hebrew calendar shows that in the year Jesus was crucified, the 14th of Abib, Passover day, the day Jesus was crucified, was Wednesday. And the annual Sabbath was Thursday. This was the Sabbath that drew on as Joseph of Arimathea hastened to bury the body of Jesus late that Wednesday afternoon. There were two separate Sabbaths that week!
Which got me thinking: How would one truly know the dates of the time? The pre-calculated Hebrew calendar as we know it was only first used around 400 years later. Armstrong doesn't cite his sources for this in the article.With google I found this site: Jewish Calendar, Hebrew Date Converter, Holidays - hebcal.com
The site shows dates going back even before the year our fixed calendar came into play, which is pretty cool in itself.
The downside is what leads to my question: I'm not sure they take into account the fact that before the year 4119 (359 CE), the calendar wasn't fixed (and in fact they do write on site that before the year 1752 CE the date may not be accurate), as, according to another google search, Jesus's death took place somewhere between 30 CE to 36 CE.
Looking up Erev Pesach dates for those years, it comes to:
CE 30 – Wednesday
CE 31 – Monday
CE 32 – Monday
CE 33 – Friday
CE 34 – Monday
CE 35 – Monday
CE 36 – Friday
Which is all very nice, but all fits very well into the modern principle of "לא אד"ו ראש ולא בד"ו פסח" (which basically means that Rosh Hashanah can't come out on Sunday, Wednesday or Friday and Pesach can't come out on Monday, Wednesday or Friday) - in other words, the Hebcal seems to line up with our modern calendar rules. While in ancient times, months were announced based on new witnesses every month, so more-or-less every day of the year could fall upon any day of the week.
My question therefore is: Is there really any sort of way to know the day of the week of every date from the years before our calendar was set up? Is there some source that has the old calendars written down somewhere? Or is Armstrong's guess really just a guess?