With Easter quickly approaching, many may ponder some of the more obscure details of Jesus’ life. We speculate on his appearance, wardrobe, stature, and diet. Especially as we draw closer to the day of Jesus’ death, these are reasonable concerns to have as we reflect on his humanity.
We want to know the answer to one question quite frequently because we want to know how it stacks up against the value of our own lives. When Jesus died, how old was he? What about his age? How old could he have been? Were his best years behind him? Was he feeling the effects of old age and the burdens of living a long life? If we can put ourselves in Jesus’ shoes, so to speak, it will help us through this. From the threshold of death, his humanity calls out to us, prompting us to reflect on our own mortality.
In times like this, it’s important to remember the resurrection. You have just as much right to it as I do. To a large extent, scholars agree that Jesus was around 33 years old when he was executed.
Christians believe that Jesus Christ, also known as Jesus of Galilee and Jesus of Nazareth, is the divine incarnate. Both Jesus’s birth from the Virgin Mary and his death by crucifixion is central to the Christian canon.
The question of his lifespan so arises. Depending on where you look, you can find a wide range of death and birth years. Due to discrepancies in the timeline of narratives surrounding Jesus’ final days, scholars have concluded that pinpointing the exact date of his death is impossible.
When Jesus died, how old was he?
According to the PBS FRONTLINE documentary “From Jesus to Christ,” Jesus was born around 4 B.C. and was killed in A.D. 30. The year of his death, as Frontline reported, is the same as the birth year given by Britannica (between 6 and 4 B.C.
According to “Dating the Death of Jesus,” written by Helen Bond and published online by Cambridge University Press in 2013, there is significant disagreement among experts over how old Jesus was when he died. Some mention Jesus’ death as happening on 14th of Nisan, which would be “Friday April 7th 30 [A.D.] or April 3rd 33,” based on a scholar’s chronological preference, but Bond does not agree to the specificity of those dates.
Finding a definitive answer on when Jesus died and how old he was is complicated because it depends on whatever calendars or narratives of Jesus’ final days people use.
Bond, however, argues that Jesus died between AD 29 and 34, around the time of the Passover holiday. Depending on whatever gospel you believe, Jesus died between the ages of 33 and 40.
Mary was how old when Jesus was crucified?
According to Christianity.com, Mary was 46 to 49 years old when Jesus died. Britannica reports that she “flourished” from 25 B.C. until A.D. 75. If this is a reference to her age, then Mary would have been between 54 and 59 years old when Jesus was crucified, according to Britannica.
How Do We Determine Jesus’ Age?
There is no clear biblical indication of how old Jesus was when he passed away. For his age at various life events, we have both biblical references and the cultural norms of his religion group.
The most important dates to remember are when he began his ministry and when he died. First, we need to establish his actual date of birth. About 400–300 BC is how long ago that was estimated to have happened. According to Luke 3:23, Jesus began his public ministry between the years 26 and 30 AD, hence his death occurred between the years 29 and 33. Additional landmarks in Jesus’ life would have included his circumcision, redemption at the Temple, Bar-Mitzvah, and coming of age (20 years old).
When Jesus first began His ministry, how old was He?
At the age of thirty, Jesus would have started his public ministry. According to Luke 3:23, he started his ministry when he was around thirty years old. He would have needed a prestigious family history to be hired as a teacher in the Holy City of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount.
In Luke 1:5, we learn that Mary, his mother, was a relative of Elizabeth, who was a daughter of Aaron. This establishes Jesus’ ancestry as a qualification for his teaching position at the Temple. To be eligible for full priestly duties, a man must reach the age of thirty, as specified in Numbers 4:3.
A series of incidents in Luke’s Gospel symbolises Jesus’s transition into his ministry. Luke 3:21 describes his baptism, 4:1-12 describes his temptation, 4:14 describes his practise, and 4:16 describes his teaching in the synagogue (Luke 4:16-22). There are multiple layers upon which the importance of this string of achievements and developments can be derived.
First, it shows that Jesus is descended from both King David and Aaron, giving him the right to rule as king and the priesthood. It explains the underlying theological tensions that led to Jesus’ disputes with his day’s religious and political leaders. Second, and more importantly, we know that Jesus’ ministry lasted for around three years because we know how old he was when he began it. This would make him 33 years old when he died on the cross.
We can now gauge Jesus’ age in comparison to our own and evaluate whether or not his behaviour was typical for his culture. According to several accounts, the median age at death in Jesus’ day was 35, making him appear much older than his actual age. JP Griffin for the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine found that the average life expectancy of those who reached the age of five was 56 years (+/- 15.5 years), once the massive statistical weighting of neonatal mortality was removed.
In comparison to his contemporaries, I believe Jesus died very young. There was no thought given to how much time he still had on this planet when he made that ultimate sacrifice. We were worth it, in his estimation.
