(A = April; N = the Heb. Month, Nisan; 1st # = Greg. Date; 2nd # = Jewish date; M = Morn; D = Day; E = Eve.)
Another way to verify the days of this event is with the chronological details of the final week, where we can identify each individual day being described in the text. Using the chapter and verses in this book we start with 8:74 where we are told that it was six days before the Passover that Jesus had sat down to eat at the house of Lazarus (A4N9E), the man Jesus had raised from the dead.
That day was most likely the evening meal, just before or as the Sabbath had set in on Friday night—their beginning of Saturday. Directly after that, we are then told that it was on the next day, (John again using the Roman reckoning of time (see endnote 12:35 of this book)) that Jesus had entered Jerusalem riding on a colt (A5N10E), probably after 6pm Saturday evening since Mark 11:11 tells us that by the time He got to the Temple that “it was already evening,” and that He had found nobody there.
Then we are told that “the next day (Sunday, the 11th of Nisan),” in the morning (A6N10M), coming down from the Mt. of Olives to go to Jerusalem, He curses the fig tree (8:96). Then again “in the morning” of the next day (Tuesday the 12th of Nisan) (8:103) the disciples notice that the fig tree had withered (A8N13M). Then in 9:9 it say that “on the same day” the Pharisee and Sadducees begin to test and find Jesus spotless by bringing to Him what they believed to be a series of unanswerable questions (A8N13D).
This series of events is then concluded with Jesus giving a teaching to His disciples that night on “the End of the Age (A8N13E),” after they had gone out to the Mt. of Olives for the evening (10:6).
Jesus then ends this teaching by declaring that the Passover was in two days (11:1). And seeing that this was after that particular day had ended, we are next told in 11:3 that the feast was approaching and the religious leaders were “trying to find a way to kill Him.” And it was at this point that we are informed that Jesus was in the Temple where some Greeks ask Jesus' disciples if they could see Him (A9N14D) (obviously that has to be the next day since we are last told that He was on the Mt. of Olives at the close of the day teaching His disciples (Wednesday the 13th of Nisan))
Finally, we are told in 11:24 that it was now the first day of the feast (Thursday the 14th of Nisan), the day they needed to kill the Passover lamb and so Jesus’ and His disciples eat the meal “in the evening (A9N14E).” (We know this was Wednesday evening because in the morning the religious leaders would not go into Pilate’s building so that they would not be kept from eating the Passover meal for themselves (J 18:28))
Having this all in mind, when we put ourselves into the events, we can see that if it was a Friday afternoon, and we would say in three days we were going to do something, we would think, “Ok, Saturday is day one, Sunday is day two, Monday is day three, Tuesday is day four, Wednesday is day five and Thursday (Passover day) is the sixth day.
From there we know that Jesus ate the meal on the evening that the Passover lamb needed to be killed, which was Wednesday evening. That night He was arrested in the Garden, spent the whole night under trial (led by the High Priest). In the morning He was brought before Pilate. At 9 am, He was sentenced to crucifixion on or in other words “entered the belly of the earth and was hung on the cross. And this was just before sundown, before the Passover Sabbath began (which was on Friday that year), He was buried, spent that day (Friday) in the grave, spent the next day (Saturday) in the grave because it was the weekly Sabbath, and then sometime time before sunup on Sunday morning was no longer in the grave.
