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Joseph Francis Alward
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E-Mail: JFAlward@aol.com Other Articles
John's account of the time of
Jesus' crucifixion apparently contradicts Mark's account. John thinks that Jesus wasn't crucified until
after about 12:00 PM noon, while Mark thinks that Jesus was already crucified
three hours earlier, at about 9:00 AM. Here is the evidence:
About the
sixth hour (hektos hora)…they shouted, "Take him away! Take him away!
Crucify him!" (John 19:14-15 NIV)
And it was the third hour when they crucified Him. (Mark 15:25)
The translators of at least seven
different Bible version all agree that John's hektos hora above
means six hours past sunrise, or about noontime. Here is how they translate hektos hora:
1. The hour was noon. (The Message)
2. About twelve o'clock noon. (Amplified Bible)
3. It was now about noon of the day (New Living
Translation)
4. It was about noon (Contemporary English
Version)
5.
It was about the middle of the day (Worldwide English)
6. It was about noon. (New
English Translation)
I won't display
the translations from eleven other versions on Bible
Gateway (http://bible.gospelcom.net/cgi-bin/bible) which
translate hektos hora literally as "the sixth hour."
None of these translations dispute the "noon" translation offered by
the seven translators above.1
The Sixth Hour Following Midnight?
Some
apologists argue that the seven translators above who said that John's hektos
hora meant "noon" are all mistaken. They claim that John actually counted hours relative to midnight,
which means that John's Jesus was sentenced at about 6:00 AM, or sunrise, which
would have allowed Jesus to be on the cross at the 9:00 AM crucifixion time
claimed by Mark.
But, does there exist any evidence
that John reckoned time relative to midnight? I believe the answer to that
question is no, and there is significant textual evidence that John measured
time relative to sunrise according to the Jewish and Roman practice, just as
the other gospel writers did. There is
evidence in at least two other passages that John counted hours relative to
sunrise.
Jacob's Well
The evidence that John measured
time relative to sunrise according to the Jewish system is found in the story
in John 4:5-7 of a travel-weary Jesus arriving at "the sixth hour" at
Jacob's well:
So he came to…Jacob's
well...and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour (hektos hora). (John 4:5-7 NIV)
What did John mean by "the
sixth hour (hektos hora)"?
Did he mean the sixth hour after midnight, or 6:00 AM, as some apologists believe, or did he mean
the sixth hour following sunrise, or 
"noon"? Well, if Jesus had arrived tired at the well
following a long journey, he would have had to have been traveling at night.
But, does not common sense point instead to a daylight journey ending at the
well at noon? It would seem so, because the translators of at least six Bible
versions report that John's hektos hora means "noon":
1. It was then about the sixth hour (about
noon). (Amplified Bible)
2. Jesus, tired from the long walk, sat
wearily beside the well about noontime. (New Living Testament)
3. It was noon (Contemporary English
Version)
4. It was about midday. (Worldwide English New Testament)
5. It was about noon. (New English Translation)
6. It was about noon. (New American Bible)
Not one
translator of any of twelve other Bible versions translates hektos hora
as "sunrise" in the Jacob's well passage.
The
Jacob's well passage is not the only one which shows that John counted hours
from sunrise.
The Lamb of God
In the following passage, the disciples meet Jesus, and because it is
already late in the afternoon they spent the rest of their day with him.
The next day, John was there again, and two of his
followers were with him. When he saw Jesus walking by, he said, "Here is
the Lamb of God!" John's two followers heard him, and they went with
Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them, he asked, "What do you want?"
They answered, "Rabbi, where do you live?" The Hebrew word
"Rabbi" means "Teacher."
Jesus replied, "Come and see!" It was already about four o'clock in
the afternoon when they went with him and saw where he lived. So they stayed on
for the rest of the day.
(John 1:35-39 Contemporary English Version)
Six
other translators of six different Bible versions listed below support the view
of the translator above, and translate dekatos hora as "four
o'clock in the afternoon."
1. It was late afternoon when this happened.
(The Message)
2. It was then about the tenth hour
(about four o'clock in the afternoon).
(Amplified Bible)
3. It was about four o'clock in the
afternoon (New Living Translation)
4. It was four o'clock in the
afternoon (New American Bible)
5. The time was about four o'clock in
the afternoon. (Worldwide English)
6. Now it was about four o’clock in the
afternoon. (New English Translation)
None
of the other eleven Bible versions available on the web contradict this
translation.
Some
apologists argue that "the tenth hour" in the Lamb of God passage is
really 10:00 AM. However, if the hour
in the Lamb of God passage really were 10:00 AM, why would John bother to tell
us that? What is the value of this
information?
On the
other hand, if the tenth hour was 4:00 PM, and the hour is late, the reader can
understand why the remainder of the disciples' day would be spent with
Jesus: It was too late to do anything
else before darkness. Thus, mentioning the time makes no sense if it's 10:00
AM, but a great deal of sense if it's 4:00 PM.
The translators of seven different Bible versions agree that the tenth
hour was 4:00 PM, and not one of eleven other translations dispute this.
Thus, we
see substantial support from seven translators and common sense that John used
the sunrise reference system of reckoning time in not only the Jacob's well
passage, but also the Lamb of God passage.
Scholarly
Support for A Noon Sentencing
Additional
support2 for a noon sentencing comes also from New Testament
Abstracts, 34 [1990] 88:
All the
data from ancient Greek and Latin texts substantiate a single unified system of
counting the hours of the day from sunrise to sunset.
And even
more support from the conservative Christian scholar, F.F. Bruce, who wrote
As for the
time of day, it was getting on toward noon.
Despite Westcott’s arguments, no evidence is forthcoming that at this
time, whether among Romans, Greeks, or Jews, hours were ever reckoned otherwise
than from sunrise” (p.364)…Romans divided the period of daylight (from sunrise
to sunset) into twelve hours, and the period of darkness (from sunset to
sunrise) into four watches (The Gospel of John, p.66)
Conclusive
proof that the sunrise reference system was used not only by the Jews, but by
Greeks and Romans alike is found in dozens of examples of time-reckoning found
in the ancient writings. Interested
readers will find these examples in the article, Time Reckoning in
Ancient Rome.
Conclusion
If John
used the Jewish system of reckoning in these two other passages of his gospel,
should we not agree with all those translators that John also used that system
in the sentencing passage? If the
answer is yes, then we see that John said that Jesus had not even been sentenced
until about noon, while Mark said that Jesus had already been crucified at nine
in the morning. At the very least, one
of the two authors was off by about three hours in the time of the crucifixion,
and this means the Bible is in error.3
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Footnotes
1.
The New American Standard Bible weakly suggests in a footnote to its
"sixth hour" translation,
"Perhaps 6 a.m."
2.
My thanks to the pseudonymous "Robyn Banks," a correspondent
on the Theology Web (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/) on April 28, 2003 for providing this
reference.
3. Some apologists believe that Jesus was indeed
sentenced at noon, but the sentencing was at noon on Thursday, a day before
Jesus' crucifixion. See, for example,
the web article "The
Sixth Hour in the Gospel of John". The timing makes no sense, however. The events described in Mark 15:13-24 makes it clear that the
crucifixion happened on the same day that Jesus was sentence.
Other apologists suggest that John's
"original autograph" (the stories about Jesus written in John's own
hand) contained the cardinal (counting) number "3" instead of the
ordinal number "third" in "the third hour." Thus, they claim that perhaps John wrote,
"hour 3" instead of "the third hour," and later a careless
scribe transcribed "hour 3" to "hour 6." This possible source of error is discussed
more fully in the article,
"Scribal
Error in John 19?"
4. A
transparently ridiculous "harmonization" of the sixth-hour problem
was presented and rebutted in May, 2003, on the Internet Infidels Errancy forum
(II-Errancy). Interested readers will
find most of the relevant comments in the two of the posts, "The
Lightfoot Solution," and "More
on the Sixth Hour,"
5. Some apologists try to argue
that because John said, "about the sixth hour," he might have meant
that the sentencing occurred at a time closer to the sixth hour of prayer
(starting at 12:00 PM) than to the third hour of prayer (starting at 8:00 AM). Thus, in this scenario, John could have had
Jesus sentenced as earlier as the midpoint of these two times, or 10:00
AM. However, this attemped
harmonization is easily defeated, because people of that time easily could tell
time to within a half hour just by looking at the sun, or within minutes using
water clocks or sundials. When John says "about the sixth hour" he
means that the time was closer to noon than to 11:00 AM or to 1:00 PM, which
means the exact time would have been between 11:30 AM and 12:30 PM. If
John had meant for his readers to know that the time was between third and
sixth hours, i.e., sometime between the third hour prayer and the sixth hour
prayer, he would have said, "between the third and sixth
hours." The fact that he didn't say this, but would have known how
to say it if that's what he really meant, is clear proof that he had a
knowledge of the sentencing time that was accurate at least to within thirty
minutes.
Mark said that the crucifixion occurred at the third hour (not about) the third
hour, so we may conclude that he meant that the time was not later than the end
of the third hour, or 9:00 AM.
Even with the most charitable interpretation, Mark has Jesus already on the
cross no later than 9:00 AM, while John has him being sentenced not any earlier
than 10:00 AM, a difference of one hour. But, it's worse than this:
A number of different things happened between the time of the sentencing and
the actually hanging on the cross.
These events are outlined in the post mentioned above in Footnote 4,
"More
on the Sixth Hour," Thus, the time discrepancy is worse than the
minimum one-hour one that I've outlined; it's more like two or three hours.
Apologists may object to the notion that people were able to mark time to an
accuracy of better than one hour, but the notion that people were able to
reckon time only by reference to three-hour blocks of time--about the third
hour, about the sixth hour, about the ninth hour, is clearly false, for there
are innumerble references to "the fifth hour," and the "seventh
hour" in Roman literature, and the Bible refers to the "tenth
hour" and "the eleventh hour," showing that time reference
wasn't limited to just the hours three, six, nine, and twelve. This is
clear evidence that people of that time could fine-tune their estimates of time
at least to within one hour.