How many days after Jesus was arrested was he crucified?

Answer 1

According to the gospels Jesus was crucified on the very day of hisarrest. In fact, Mark's Gospel provides a very exact chronology of the events of the last twenty four hours in the life of Jesus:

• The story begins "when it was evening" (Mark 14:17), or when the sun went down: approximately 6 pm.
• Mark knew that the duration of the Passover meal was three hours and that it concluded with the singing of a hymn, so at the end of his segment he says, "And when they had sung a hymn they went out to the Mount of Olives". It was about 9 p.m.
• Mark then has Jesus and the disciples go to the Garden of Gethsemane, where his disciples, Peter, James and John, were not able to remain awake. "Could you not watch one hour?" Jesus asked. The process was repeated two more times. The disciples could not watch one, two or three hours. It was now midnight.
• The act of betrayal, the darkest deed in human history, came next, occurring at the stroke of midnight.
• Jesus was led away for a trial before the high priest and other senior priests and elders. This governing body then judged him, on the basis of his messianic claim, to be worthy of death. It was 3:00 a.m.
• The watch of the night between 3 am and 6 am was called cockcrow. Peter's threefold denial of Jesus, once each hour until the cock crowed, marked the end of that phase of the night. That makes it 6 am.
• "As soon as it was morning", which would be 6 am, Jesus was led by the chief priests, scribes and elders to Pontius Pilate for judgement.
• "It was the third hour when they crucified him," that is, 9 o'clock in the morning.
• When "the sixth hour had come" (12 noon), darkness covered the whole earth, reflecting the betrayal at 12 midnight.
• After just three hours of darkness, Jesus said "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" At 3 pm, Jesus gave up the ghost.
• Jesus was buried in the final period from 3 to 6 pm, before the sun went down.
• That brings us to 6 pm on Friday evening, reflecting the beginning of the passion on 6 pm on Thursday evening.

This tells us that Jesus undoubtedly arrested at 12:00 midnight and crucified at 9:00 in the morning of the same day. Or, if we choose to feel that this sequence is too artificial to be a genuine history, then we do not really know when Jesus was crucified, or if he was crucified at all. The other gospels, known to be based on Mark, more or less followed the same sequence and times, but were written such as partly to lose the artificial pattern of Mark.

Answer 2

no