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five days of the week and naming the sixth and the seventh as paraskeue and sabbaton -- Prepara-
tion and weekly Sabbath.

Explains Samuele Bacchiocchi --

Christians coming from a Gentile background had to learn this Judeo-Christian nomen-
clature of the week-days, because in the PAGAN WORLD the week-days were not num-
bered but named after the seven planetary deities (dies solis, dies lunae,...). This may ex-
plain why Mark, in writing to a Gentile-Christian readership who had only recently
LEARNED THE JUDEO-CHRISTIAN NOMENCLATURE OF THE WEEK-DAYS,
deemed it necessary to clarify what he meant by "paraskeue-preparation," by adding the
qualifying phrase, "that is, the day before the Sabbath" (Mark 15:42). This clarification
may also have been necessitated by the fact that the seven-day planetary week itself had
been recently introduced in the Roman world where the EIGHT-DAY WEEK (nund-
inum) was still used side-by-side with the planetary week (The Time of the Crucifixion
and Resurrection, chapter 3).

After giving us an accurate definition of the word "paraskeue," Bacchiocchi stumbles over
a verse in the book of John and goes right off track in explaining it. The offending verse is John
19:14, which reads: "Now it was the Preparation Day of the Passover, and about the sixth hour.
And he said to the Jews, 'Behold your King!' In an attempt to explain this apparent contradiction,
Bacchiocchi claims that "the failure to recognize the technical usage of the term 'Preparation' as the
name for 'Friday,' has caused some to misinterpret [?] John's phrase 'it was the day of Preparation
of the Passover' (John 19:14) as meaning 'the day of Preparation for the Passover.' The latter is in
fact the translation of the American Revised Standard Version. On the basis of this misunderstand-
ing, Wednesday Crucifixionists argue that in John 'the day of Preparation' means not Friday but the
Wednesday preceding the Passover day, which supposedly fell on a Thursday."

If Bacchiocchi had only understood the fact that, under the Lunar calendar the Jews kept at
the time of Christ, the first high day of Passover (Nisan 15) fell on the weekly Sabbath, he would
not have had to go to all the trouble of trying to explain what he thought was a failure to understand
the usage of the term "Preparation."

And, furthermore, the so-called Wednesday crucifixionists are right in stating the Passover
day (Nisan 15) occurred on a Thursday in 30 A.D. -- but they are DEAD WRONG in maintaining
the resurrection occurred on a Saturday! Jesus Christ was put to death on the Preparation Day (Ni-
san 14 -- Wednesday), the first high day of Unleavened Bread AND the weekly Sabbath fell on the
next day (Nisan 15 -- Thursday), and He arose from the dead on the following day (Nisan 16 --
Friday). So both Bacchiocchi and Dankenbring, et al, are wrong in that the crucifixion-resurrection
sequence did not occur on Friday through Sunday or on Wednesday through Saturday.

The tradition of a Wednesday crucifixion has an ancient origin. Philip Schaff, in his monu-
mental History of the Christian Church, reports that a number of the early Christian congrega-
tions observed "the weekly commemoration of the sufferings and death of the Lord" on
Wednesdays -- even while others observed Fridays. Gradually, however, the Wednesday tradition
disappeared.

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