As noted earlier, the translation of the Gospels that we’re working on will blend all four Gospel messages into a single account. In doing this, I’ve found some interesting evidence about what happened during the process of Jesus’ arrest, trials, and crucifixion and his resurrection. The Bible makes it obvious that some of our traditional ideas about what happened have to be wrong. Here are some of the things I learned:

1. Our traditional idea is that Jesus was arrested in the early pre-dawn hours of Friday and was crucified that same day. That’s not what the Bible says. Mark records that Jesus was crucified at the third hour of the day (9:00 am), but John tells us that Pilate set up his judgment seat to pass Judgment on Jesus at the sixth hour of the day (noon). It’s obvious that the day Pilate passed judgment cannot be the same day as the day Jesus was crucified.
2. In the same vein, our traditional view holds that Jesus was examined by Jewish authorities after dawn on Friday and then tried by Pilate, then by Herod, and then by Pilate again and was still on the cross by 9:00 that morning. This all happened in Jerusalem, an ancient town with narrow streets, while Passover crowds crammed the streets. There is no way that all of this could have happened between dawn and 9:00, even if we don’t include the mocking by Herod and his soldiers and the torture by Pilate’s soldiers and the fact that the Roman governor (Pilate) was trying to drag his feet.
3. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell how Jesus and his disciples celebrated the Passover feast and how Jesus was arrested later that night. John tells how the Jewish leaders would not enter Pilate’s headquarters because that would make them ceremonially unclean and keep them from sharing in the feast. Moses’ law tells us that Passover was part of a 7-day feast (the Feast of Unleavened Bread), and that there were two feast days involved: the first day and the seventh day, each of which was a special Sabbath (not the normal Saturday Sabbath). John makes it clear that Jesus was crucified on the day before a special Sabbath (called a Preparation Day). The feast that Jesus and his disciples observed before he was arrested is clearly the first day, the official Passover feast. The feast John mentioned must be the seventh day, making several days between the arrest and the crucifixion.
4. In AD 34, the Passover feast (always on the 15th day of the Jewish month Nisan) came on a Friday. If that was the day Jesus was arrested, then the seventh day was a Thursday and since Jesus was crucified on the day before that final feast he would have been crucified on a Wednesday and buried that evening just before sundown.
5. The Bible tells us that the women came to the tomb on Sunday morning (the first day of the week about dawn), and that Jesus was not in the tomb when they arrived. The Bible does not tell us exactly when Jesus rose from the dead. If Jesus rose from the dead just after sunset on Saturday, according to the Jewish calendar that would be Sunday (the day changed at sunset), and Jesus would have been in the tomb three days and three nights just as he said he would be.
6. Several women came to the tomb early Sunday morning, around dawn, and found the tomb empty. On seeing the empty tomb, Mary Magdalene left the group and ran outside, but the rest of the women then saw two of God’s agents sitting in the tomb. The agents told them that Jesus had risen from the dead and instructed them to tell Jesus’ disciples. They went to meet with Jesus’ disciples, and as they were going Jesus appeared to them. But when they got to the disciples, none of them would believe their story.
7. Meanwhile, Peter, after his denial of Jesus, was not with the other disciples. (The agents of God had told the women to take the news to the disciples and Peter, indicating that Peter wasn’t with the rest.) Mary Magdalene, without having seen the agents or Jesus, was on her way to tell Peter that the body was no longer in the tomb. When she got to where Peter was staying, John was there, too. What she told them was not that Jesus had risen from the dead, but that the tomb was empty. That’s all she knew.
8. Peter and John ran to the tomb to see for themselves what had happened. From what John says in his Gospel, he believed in the resurrection after seeing the linen wrappings lying in the empty tomb, even though the agents did not appear to him or Peter. Peter’s reaction is described more as confusion at that point. Then Peter and John left the tomb area, and Mary Magdalene arrived back at the tomb.
9. Looking inside the tomb, this time Mary Magdalene saw the two agents of God, but she didn’t realize that they were anything but men working in the tomb area. She turned from the tomb and saw Jesus, but through her tears she didn’t recognize him until he spoke her name.
10. At some point that day, and the Bible doesn’t tell us when, Jesus appeared to Peter after he left the tomb. We don’t know whether this happened while he was still with John or not. Jesus also appeared to two disciples who were not part of the inner circle of twelve, and then he finally appeared to the whole group (the inner circle group and probably some others) with the exception of Thomas. They were together in an upper room, probably the room where they had shared the Passover meal, in Jerusalem.
11. A week later Jesus appeared to the inner circle group again, including Thomas. This time the Bible doesn’t tell us where they were, it only says that the doors were shut when Jesus suddenly appeared. By this time they may have been back in Galilee, since Jesus had given them instructions to go there.

The first draft of a new translation of the gospels is complete. Lots more to do, but it’s exciting work. This translation will blend all four gospels into a single easy-to-read account of the life and ministry of Jesus. All difficult names (people or places) will be relegated to footnotes and the language will be conversational American English.

The New Testament was written in a form of Greek commonly used in the marketplace–a form of Greek easily understood by almost anybody in the Roman Empire. This new translation has a similar goal for American Christians, making it easy for a new Christian to read and understand the message.

There will also be lots of background notes in a glossary to help those who are truly interested in digging deeper into the message.

The translation will have no specific theological perspective. It’s goal is to simply put into plain American English the message as the original authors recorded it. Where a passage is open to more than one interpretation, there will be a footnote explaining the options and why we chose the one we did.

Please pray for the work. There is so much yet to do!

I’ve been translating the gospels, combining them into one single account that flows smoothly and that’s very easy to read (today’s conversational wording) and including a lot of background notes to clarify what’s really going on and why. I was working on John 8 where Jesus is confronted with a woman caught in the very act of adultery. (Pretty embarrassing!) Of course, many of us are aware of the obvious question—“If she was caught in the very act of adultery, why wasn’t the man also brought before Jesus?” But I found something else very interesting to me. In going over the account I noticed for the first time how Jesus followed the Law of Moses so accurately. According to the Law of Moses, if two or more witnesses testified to the guilt of a person, that person was to be condemned. So that’s exactly what Jesus did. First he simply stooped down and started writing in the dirt with his finger. Then he stood up and in effect what he said was, “Stone her.” After all, that was what the Law of Moses required. But he added his famous caveat: “But, make sure the first stone comes from the one among you who is without sin.” Now, some have suggested that what Jesus was writing in the dirt was the sins he knew these men to be guilty of—sins they would not have wanted the crowd to hear about. While we’ll never know, that’s not a bad guess. In any case, starting with the older ones, the witnesses against this woman drifted into the crowd without throwing a single stone. At that point there was a woman standing before Jesus with no witnesses against her, and according to the law of Moses, if there were no witnesses, a person could not be condemned. Jesus could have acted as a witness, because he certainly knew of her sin, but he was only one witness. So Jesus told the woman, “I’m not going to condemn you either. You can go, but don’t sin any more.”