(5.) Wieseler’s own chronological tables may be used against him to show that the Friday of our Lord’s crucifixion was the fourteenth of Nisan. We would speak with becoming diffidence, in any attempt to make out a system of chronology for the events recorded in Scripture. There are, however, in Wieseler’s elaborate book, tables independently proved to be accurate. By them, admitting the year of our Lord’s crucifixion to have been A. D. 30, which is regarded by most chronologists as highly probable, and admitting also that the day was Friday, which will not be disputed, it is shown, beyond all doubt, that Christ died on the fourteenth of Nisan, and must have eaten the passover with his disciples on the first hours of that day, the preceding evening. The tables referred to show, by the most minute and accurate calculations, that in the year, A. D. 30, the new moon for the month Nisan appeared on Wednesday, the next to the last day of the preceding month, corresponding to March 22, at eight minutes past eight o’clock in the evening. Hence, it would follow that the first day of Nisan commenced on Friday evening, March 24, corresponding, as to daylight, with Saturday, March 25; of course, the Friday of the next week, would be the seventh Nisan, and the same day, the following week, the fourteenth. Thus, according to Wieseler’s own tables, Friday of the week of our Lord’s passion is made out to be the fourteenth of Nisan. The fifteenth of Nisan, then, or the first day of unleavened bread, coincided at that time with the seventh day of the week, or the Jewish Sabbath; and reckoning fifty days from the morrow, that day included, we find Pentecost falling on the first day of the eighth week following our Lord’s crucifixion. So clear and emphatic is the testimony of the primitive church to this fact that many who hold that the Friday of Christ’s death was the fifteenth Nisan still do so in cordial indorsement of that fact. They reconcile the apparent difference between John and the Synoptists by supposing that the Jewish authorities, probably because of the crucifixion, or for some other reason, did not observe the Passover at the usual time, but, passing by the fifteenth Nisan, in reality kept the sixteenth in its place; and thus counting the fifty days from the seventeenth of the month, instead of the sixteenth, Pentecost would fall on the first day of the week. It is worth mentioning, before we pass on, that the Karaite Jews, like the Sadducces before them, understand the word “Sabbath” in Leviticus 23:11, 15, 16, to mean, not the first day of unleavened bread, which was kept as a Sabbath, on whatever day of the week it might fall, but the seventh day of the week, the regular weekly Sabbath of the Jews. According to this understanding, the fifty days would always be reckoned from the morrow after the seventh day, and Pentecost would always fall on the first day of the week.