What Time Did Jesus Die? (The Answer Might Surprise You)

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily match my own. - Dr. Bart D. Ehrman

The question of the exact time when Jesus died on the cross is actually quite complicated. While many are familiar with the accounts of his crucifixion, the precise time of his death remains unclear to some Bible readers — especially when considering the context of ancient timekeeping methods.

So what time did Jesus die? In this article, I’ll answer that question by exploring ancient time-measurement methods and then examining how these methods influenced the Gospel narratives surrounding Jesus’ death. By understanding this background, we can better interpret the timing of this pivotal event in history.

Time Measurement in the Ancient World

In order to answer the question of precisely what time Jesus died on the cross, we must first understand how time was measured in his historical time and location. There were no watches and no precise mechanical clocks then, so how did people measure the hours of the day?

In the ancient Jewish context in which Jesus lived and died, the time of daylight was divided into 12 units called hours (Greek: hōrai). So far, that sounds like our modern system. However, since there were no precise clocks, the duration of an hour was not entirely fixed. In his book Roman Pompeii: Space and Society, for example, Ray Laurence notes that in the ancient Mediterranean world, an hour in midwinter would only last about 45 minutes since the daylight time is shorter. An hour in midsummer, on the other hand, would last about 75 minutes since there was more daylight time.

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So how did ancient people refer to the times of the day? Our modern system of hours begins measuring each new day at midnight. Midnight to 1:00 is the first hour of the day, 1:00 to 2:00 is the second hour of the day, etc. However, while the Roman system of time measurement similarly marked the first hour of a new day at midnight, in Time and Process in Ancient Judaism, Sacha Stern writes that the Jewish system designated the first hour of the day at dawn, usually somewhere around 6:00 AM for us. They would call this the 1st hour, remembering, of course, that the duration of an hour was flexible and depended on the seasons and amount of daylight.

This variability of hours also meant that all specified times of the day were approximate rather than precise. If you were told to arrive somewhere “at the 9th hour,” there was no precise time corresponding to this designation. Instead, people made rough estimates of when that time was according to the position of the sun and arrived about that time. This meant that they couldn’t consider someone late unless they had missed the time by at least a few hours.

To sum all this up, what was called the 1st  hour in ancient Palestine occurred at about 6:00 AM. That meant that the 6th hour was around noon. Sunset was the 12th hour or around 6:00 PM. Therefore, when we read ancient accounts of times of the day, we have to translate those hours into rough estimates of what modern time each hour would correspond to, including the season since that affected the length of each hour.

Having explained the way time was measured and designated in Jesus’ world, I’ll now look at the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ crucifixion and see what time they say he died. Remember, by the way, that we have no eyewitness accounts of the crucifixion. Instead, we have oral traditions passed down through generations and written down decades after Jesus died. However, since  the Gospels are the only ancient sources that talk about what time Jesus died, that’s all we have to go on.

What Time Was Jesus Crucified in the Gospel of Mark?

Since Mark is our earliest written Gospel, it’s a good place to start this investigation. Mark refers to specific times of the day leading up to and including Jesus’ crucifixion. Also, since Jesus’ crucifixion happened in the spring (probably in April), we know that the length of hours roughly corresponded to the length of our standard modern hours:

“As soon as it was morning” most likely indicates the 1st hour, or about 6:00 in the morning. We don’t know how long the council would have met, but since they’d also gathered the night before in Mark’s story, it was probably a brief meeting, and Jesus would have arrived at the court of Pilate between 7:00 and 8:00 AM.

As I said above, the first hour was about 6:00 in the morning. This means that the 3rd hour was about 9:00 in the morning. In fact, the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition actually just says “nine o’ clock in the morning” in its translation just to make things clear to modern readers. Keep in mind, though, that this was when they first put Jesus on the cross, not when he died. Death by crucifixion was as slow as it was tortuous.

So if the 3rd hour was 9:00 AM, the 6th hour was noon. At noon, darkness fell over the land for three hours. At the 9th hour, or 3:00 PM, Jesus cried out his last words and soon died. According to Mark, then, Jesus died at about 3:00 PM.

What Time Did Jesus Die in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke?

If you’ve read many of the previous posts on this website, you probably know that Matthew, Mark, and Luke are called the Synoptic Gospels. The word “synoptic“ is derived from a Greek word meaning “seen together” because the three Gospels share a lot of the same material. Since scholars know that Mark was written before Matthew and Luke, they assume that Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source. This doesn’t mean that Mark was their only source — there is some material in both Gospels that is independent of Mark — but when they used Mark, they most often copied whole sections word for word. This is the case with most of the chronology of Mark, as well as some of the descriptions of the crucifixion.

Although neither Matthew nor Luke say what time Jesus was first placed on the cross, they both agree with the other two times Mark mentions.

True to form, then, Matthew and Luke agree with their source Mark that Jesus died around 3:00 in the afternoon.

What Time Did Jesus Die on the Cross in the Gospel of John?

Since John didn’t use Mark as a source (although there is some debate about this), his timeline of Jesus’ life is often quite different from the Synoptics. In John, for instance, Jesus’ Cleansing of the Temple, in which he drives out the money-changers, happens at the beginning of his ministry. This happens at the end of the Synoptics’ version, on the other hand, and seems to precipitate Jesus’ arrest. In addition, John contains miracle stories — like the turning of water to wine — which the other three do not.

As you might expect, then, John’s chronology of the crucifixion is a bit different, as well:

Unlike in Mark, Jesus is presented to the crowd by Pilate at noon. By noon in Mark (and presumably in Matthew and Luke as well), Jesus had already been on the cross for three hours. We can presume, then, that John’s Jesus died later than Mark’s, although the Gospel of John is not specific about the exact hour Jesus died.

However, in “The History and Pathology of Crucifixion,” F.P. Retief and L. Cilliers write that death by crucifixion could take anywhere from six hours to four days. Although John is generally silent on the matter of the time of death, it was presumably before sundown since it was the day before the Sabbath, which began at sundown, and bodies had to be taken down before the Sabbath. However, Mark says it took six hours, with Jesus dying at about 3:00 in the afternoon. Since that time frame accords with Retief and Cilliers’ assessment of how long crucifixions lasted, it’s safe to say that Jesus probably died around 3:00 PM.

Conclusion

Ancient people didn’t have the luxury of measuring the hours of the day as precisely as we can. Instead, they generally divided up the daylight time into twelve units they called hours, with the hours lasting different lengths depending on how long daylight lasted.

Jews started measuring the hours with the 1st hour at dawn, corresponding roughly to our 6:00 AM. The day then concluded with the 12th hour, about 6:00 PM. This is how times of the day are referred to throughout the New Testament.

What time did Jesus die? Mark says that he was placed on the cross at the 3rd hour, or 9:00 AM. At the 6th hour, or noon, he says that darkness fell over the land, lasting until the 9th hour, or 3:00 PM, when Jesus finally gave up the ghost. Matthew and Luke, following Mark’s timeline, agree that the time of Jesus’ death was 3:00 PM.

John, although he doesn’t actually say what time Jesus was crucified, does say that at noon — the 6th hour — Pilate was still trying him. However, when he died, it must have been before dark since the Sabbath would begin at nightfall and no dead bodies could be left unburied.

Since we have some medical information that crucifixion usually took at least six hours, it is safest to accept Mark’s timeline: Jesus died at about 3:00 in the afternoon.