A:This is best answered from the Gospel of Mark, which was the original gospel on which the others were directly or indirectly based. Mark takes its readers through the events following the last supper in eight intervals of just three hours each.
- We start with the Last Supper, which began "when it was evening" (Mark 14:17), or when the sun went down: approximately 6 pm.
- Mark knew that the duration of the Passover meal was three hours and that it concluded with the singing of a hymn, so the first thing Jesus did was to sing a hymn with his disciples. Then Mark says, "And when they had sung a hymn they went out to the Mount of Olives". It was about 9 p.m.
- Mark then has Jesus and the disciples go to the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus went to pray. His disciples, Peter, James and John, were not able to remain awake. "Could you not watch one hour?" Jesus asked. The process was repeated two more times. The disciples could not watch one, two or three hours. It was now midnight.
- The act of betrayal, the darkest deed in human history, came next, occurring at the stroke of midnight.
- At 3:00 a.m., Jesus was led away for a trial before the high priest and other senior priests and elders. This governing body then judged him, on the basis of his messianic claim, to be worthy of death.
- The watch of the night between 3 am and 6 am was called cockcrow. Peter's threefold denial of Jesus, once each hour until the cock crowed, marked the end of that phase of the night. That makes it 6 am.
- "As soon as it was morning", which would be 6 am, Jesus was led by the chief priests, scribes and elders to Pontius Pilate for judgement.
- "It was the third hour when they crucified him," that is, 9 o'clock.
- When "the sixth hour had come" (12 noon), darkness covered the whole earth, reflecting the betrayal at 12 midnight.
- After three hours of darkness, at 3 p.m., Jesus cried out and gave up the ghost.
- Joseph of Arimathea then asked Pilate for the body of Jesus, so that he could be buried before the Sabbath began. Jesus was buried in the final period from 3 to 6 pm, before the sun went down.
