Before Beginning This Study:  Essential Information
How The Biblical Timeline Was Developed:

   This entire study rests upon God's Seven-Millennium Plan For The World.  With study, this 7000-year timespan emerges from the pages of the Bible, and is an account of God's plan to bring mankind full circle from the perfection of the original Earth at Eden, overcoming the fall from Grace which we have so foolishly chosen, and then finally back to the perfection of the New Earth after 7000 years.  This is apparently the amount of time that will be necessary for lessons to be learned, not only by mankind but also by those angels which have also chosen their own fall from Grace.  Hebroots.com has another concise but fuller explanation.  Here are just a few of the many good articles on this subject:
Does God Have a 7,000-Year Master Plan?

God's Prophetic Timeline - 7000 Years of Humanity

God's 7,000 Year Plan

Could God Have a 6,000 Year Plan?

NOTE:  These and other sources which I reference, write from a variety of backgrounds and belief systems.
I do not necessarily agree with everything they teach.
Please bear this in mind moving forward.
The Anchor Point:  Jesus' Crucifixion Date - What We Know About The Timeline:

     1 - In his gospel, John makes it very plain that the day Jesus died "was the day of preparation for the Passover."  - John 19:42

             Leviticus 23 details Israel's Sabbaths.  The first month of the year is Nisan (one of a few names), with Preparation for the Passover always on Nisan 14 - it is not a
          Sabbath Day.  It is the day the Lamb was slain and the work was done in Preparation for the Feast Day; and work such as this was simply not allowed on a Sabbath
          Day.  The Feast Day follows immediately at sundown, which begins the next day, Nisan 15, with the actual Passover - when God Passed Over the Israelites - at midnight
          later that night.  - Exodus 12  Nisan 15 begins with the Seder meal which begins the seven-day Feast of Unleavened Bread.  It is a Sabbath Day:

              4 'These are the appointed times of the LORD, holy convocations which you shall proclaim at the times appointed for them
              5 'In the first month [Nisan], on the fourteenth day of the month at twilight is [as the 14th is ending at sunset, this begins] the LORD'S Passover.
              6 'Then on the fifteenth day of the same month there is the Feast of Unleavened Bread to the LORD; for seven days you shall eat unleavened bread.
              7 'On the first day [first of the 7 days: Nisan 15] you shall have a holy convocation; you shall not do any laborious work.   - Leviticus 23:4-7

             Jesus, who is "the Lamb who has been slain" (Rev 13:8), is our Perfect Lamb who was slain for our sins.  He is the One foreshadowed by the yearly sacrifice of the
          Temple lambs of the Old Covenant every Nisan 14.  John made it clear in his gospel that, just as these lambs were slain, Jesus was slain late in the day on Nisan 14,
          the Preparation Day for the Passover, just prior to the Passover event itself at twilight, and the subsequent Feast of Unleavened Bread on Nisan 15 - a yearly Sabbath
          day. [This was studied at The Purpose of this Project - Background Information.]

     2 - Jesus said there would be "three days and three nights" after His death until He would resurrect.   - Matthew 12:40

     3 - After Jesus died, His body was brought to the tomb for burial.  This was done quickly because Sabbath was near, so the women at the tomb couldn't immediately fully
          prepare the body for burial.  They didn't have enough time to do this work before the beginning of Sabbath, and of course they then had to wait until Sabbath had ended
          before doing the work.   - Luke 23:54 - 24:1

Jesus' Date of Birth - What We Know About The Timeline:

     1 - Jesus was born when Herod the Great was king over Judea, near the time of Herod's death.   - Matthew 2:1 & 13-15

             Matthew goes into some detail about Jesus' birth, with the reign of King Herod the Great being the most helpful clue in determining when Jesus was born.
          Herod was a sick man (in more ways than one) approaching death, who had his own family members killed in order to maintain power.  Shortly after Jesus'
          birth Herod also tried to have Jesus killed, but Jesus' family escaped to Egypt and stayed there until Herod's death.  We know this was a short period of time
          because Luke, who was the only other biblical writer to detail Jesus' birth, goes through the event without even mentioning this escape.  In fact, Luke states
          that just forty days after the birth, the family had left Bethlehem and was now in Jerusalem in accordance with Mosaic Law.   - Luke 2:21-24; Leviticus 12:1-8

             Most scholars believe that Herod died c 4 BC, but this seems to be based as much upon tradition as evidence.  The latest research suggests that Herod the
          Great died in 1 BC, and that Jesus would have been born no more than two years earlier, in 3 or 2 BC.   (source pt1, pt2, pt3)

     2 - "When He began His ministry, Jesus Himself was about thirty years of age...."   - Luke 3:23
Creation's Date - What We Know About The Timeline:

     1 - God's Creation of the Earth took place in a six day period, from Sunday through Friday.  The seventh day God rested.   - Genesis 1:1 - 2:3

Creation's Date - What We Can Conclude:

   From a Timeline perspective we don't know much more than this until we again bring to mind God's Seven-Millennium Plan For The World.  With this perspective, it seems that there would likely be Millennial Markers - Anchor Point Events occurring precisely at the beginnings or endings of millennia.  Since it is the beginning of all of God's dealings with mankind, Creation would necessarily be the First Marker.
 
   Because we have almost no direct biblical information as to the when of Creation, the goal has become to discover a subsequent Millennial Marker which would then point - in exact millennia - back to Creation.  It has historically been common practice to look at certain other biblical events to see if they might mark these millennia, in particular the incarnation and ministry of the Redeemer of the World, which does certainly seem to be a prime place to look for such a connection.
 
   The most famous timeline connector of these two events is the 17th century Anglican Archbishop, James Ussher, whose work retains many supporters to this day. (source)  Ussher calculated the Creation to have occurred on October 23, 4004 BC, but since his work has been proven incorrect (Jesus' Second Advent didn't happen in 2004) it has been suggested that he may have fudged his work just a little to come up with that year, since it is exactly Four Millennia prior to 4 BC, the year long supported as that of Jesus' birth.  Whatever the case, in spacing these events to exactly four millennia, it appears that Ussher too believed in God's Seven-Millennium Plan For The World.  (source)
How And Why The Biblical Timeline Was Created:

   After having established three biblical events as anchor points, seeing how well they aligned with one another, and how the dating for each of them solved a number of otherwise potential problems; the way forward was obvious.  It was time to get to the heart of the matter and attempt to solve the issue of God's Seven-Millennium Plan For The World : Is there one?

   The place to begin was with the date of Creation in 3968 BC - with the lineage of the ancients as given in Genesis, running from Adam to Joseph, son of Isaac.  This lineage was laid down according to each of their years of birth and their ages when they fathered the next generation.  This easily-calculated lineage (at least for the large majority of entries) ending with Joseph took me to the early 16th Century BC.

   From there I was able to continue making progress through the study and varification of various biblical events, for which God had His writers give us invaluable timing information, often in the form of the number of intervening years, and often by relating events according to specific years of a king's reign - kings who have been very reliably assigned their times in the historical record.  Some events took a bit of digging to ferret out enough detail to satisfy the need for confidence, but I have come through this study with a level of certainty which I would not have thought possible beforehand.  I must give credit here to the people at bible.ca who created a simply outstanding Timeline Chart for the period of Israel's Divided Kingdom.  An incredible amount of research produced for them a richly detailed document which was most helpful through that time period.  I also learned the degree to which the biblical writers went, in order to provide dating information, making it obvious that all this detail was meant to be put to use.




Calandar Parameters:

   Without establishing at least one reasonably strong Biblical-Event Anchor-Point within the biblical timeline; one that is helpful in determining successive Event Time-Points, it is difficult to establish relationships in time, for events which took place long ago, both relative to each other and also within the established historical record.  And if we don't have an accurate understanding of the Biblical Calendar that the Bible's writers were using we may as well not even begin the project.
 
   I wrote my Biblical Hebrew Calendar Creator (BHCC) software after it became clear that online Bible Calendar programs didn't always correctly include all the parameters which were used by the biblical Hebrews.  Or it was impossible to know if all the parameters were operating, without being able to compare results from a program which I knew did include them.
 
   I went to great effort to find the information necessary to create the Correct Calendar incorporating the Correct Parameters.  You should know that there is some disagreement on precisely what those parameters should be, but more than once my decisions in this area were made quite easy after finding what the Bible has to say.
 
   I believe my software, as closely as possible, reveals the Calendar that the Bible-Time Hebrews would have been guided by.  When this information is viewed in conjunction with other information as revealed either within the Bible or within the historical record, the timing of certain crucial events can be established with a degree of certainty.  Carrying on, the more information that subsequently aligns with and supports the dating of events in the timeline, the stronger one's confidence becomes in the dating methodology itself.  We are speaking primarily of the Timing of certain special events in biblical history, and how, with a correctly functioning calendar creator in hand, those events can be seen to align with the special dates which God speaks of in the Bible.  This is especially relevant to the prime years located near the End or the Beginning of a Millennium, and how the events of these years align with the Feasts and Festivals of the Old Covenant, which God delineates in Leviticus 23 - God's "appointed times"; God's moedim.
  Some of the Calendar parameters pertaining to the biblical timeline that are included in the BHCC, and which may not be included in other programs, include:
   After creating the BHCC, to begin the process of establishing a Biblical Timeline I needed to find a Biblical Event Anchor Point.  Since we really do have quite a lot of information about Jesus' crucifixion both from history and the Bible, I began there.  If I could pin down a solid (or at least a semi-solid) date when this occurred, I could then move on to see what else might be revealed; perhaps about the date of Jesus' birth, the date of Creation and so on; and ultimately how all this might create a coherent picture of the biblical timeline and God's Seven-Millennium Plan For The World.

   It needs to be noted from the outset that this process is subjective in nature and as such, one simply cannot justify being dogmatic in their conclusions.  There is more we need to know before anyone can say they are absolutely certain about these things, and those who do claim to be certain should be taken with a number of grains of salt.  While I do believe God has led me to find the information I've been looking for, I have not received Divine Assurance that all things presented here are absolutely accurate.  I have and will continue to pray that God will grant me that Assurance, as He did on one very special occasion in the past.
     4 - The women came early Sunday morning, before sunrise "while it was still dark" (John 20:1) but Jesus had already resurrected in the waning hours of the night.
             Remembering Jesus' "three days and three nights":

             Now keep in mind that the Hebrews' days begin and end at sundown.  So for example: Sunday night is the First Part of Sunday, and it actually begins at what
          we consider to be Saturday Evening.   If we now count back from Sunday night, three days and three nights, we will know the day of the week when Jesus died.
          Well actually there are differing ways to do this, and they give us different results:

             i) The "post-dating" method counts only full time periods, and neither Nisan 14's part day nor Sunday's part night are counted.  So we count back:
                      Saturday (1 night + 1 day) + Friday (1 night + 1 day) + Thursday (1 night + 1 day) = 3 days & 3 nights; to a Wednesday afternoon crucifixion.

            ii) The "ante-dating" method, preferred and generally used by the Hebrews, counts parts of time periods.  So again counting back we have:
                      Sunday (1 (part) night) + Saturday (1 night + 1 day) + Friday (1 night + 1 day) + Thursday (1 (part) day) = 3 days & 3 nights; to a Thursday afternoon crucifixion.

           iii) In addition to their practice of ante-dating, we need to understand the Hebrews' concept of a stated period of time, such as a day.  As explained here, the Hebrews
                 considered any part of a day to be counted as an entire day.  Jesus thought and spoke as a Hebrew, and His "three days and three nights" were three day-nights:
                      Friday afternoon death by crucifixion (1 day) + Saturday in the tomb (1 day) + Sunday resurrection just before dawn (1 day) = 3  day-nights; 3 days
                 This third method is really just the implementation of the Hebrews' common practice of ante-dating, as at point ii) above, along with the correct understanding of the
                 way in which they counted segments of time.  And this confirms Jesus' Friday crucifixion.
                    This is no different than how someone today might convey a period of time.  We might say, "We celebrated Christmas for three days."; even though the actual
                 celebrating may have begun at 9:00 PM on the 24th and ended at 1:00 PM on the 26th.
   From the above, we can form two solid conclusions:
     1) Jesus died on Nisan 14; and
     2) Jesus died late in the afternoon on a Friday.
The Anchor Point:  Jesus' Crucifixion Date - What We Can Conclude:

   After beta testing removed any bugs from the BHCC (happily none were significant), I was anxious to see what the software would reveal about Jesus' crucifixion date.  I needed to know which years around the time of Jesus' ministry had Nisan 14 falling on a Friday.  Allowing far more range than necessary, I started my search with 15 AD and ended it with 50 AD.  The BHCC revealed that three of these 36 years had their Nisan 14 on a Friday:  33, 37, and 40 AD.
   I searched for but could not find any scholarly support for either 37 or 40 AD as the year of Jesus' death.  This was not surprising since these years can be ruled out for a number of reasons.  For example:

          "There are certain limitations that can be placed on the possible date range.  Caiaphas was high priest from AD 18 to the Passover of AD 37 (so Jesus' death
          could not be any later than Passover in AD 36).  Also, Pilate ruled from AD 26-36.  So Jesus must have died by AD 36."  - source

   On the other hand, 33 AD aligns perfectly with much historical evidence, including a 1 BC death for King Herod the Great which the latest evidence increasingly confirms.  33 AD has much scholarly support (example), and has enjoyed this support for a very long time.

   We therefore must again assert that the year with the best evidence that it was the year in which the Lord was crucified, is clearly 33 AD.
     3 - Scholars almost universally agree that Jesus' earthly ministry lasted from three to four years.  This is surmised from a reading of John's Gospel in which John
          speaks of three Passovers attended by Jesus.  (John 2:13; 6:4; 11:55-57)  This is a range of time from just over two years, to just under four years.  It is very
          likely that Jesus also attended a fourth Passover which John didn't specifically say was a Passover (source).  Since Jesus died at the time of His last
          Passover, this creates a range of time from three years to four years, which we conclude with a fairly high degree of confidence.
 
             So from scripture we can estimate that Jesus lived about 33 to 34 years ("about 30 years" + 3 to 4 years of ministry), give or take a few months.  We have
          also previously seen that the evidence is strong that Jesus died in April (Nisan), 33 AD.  When we subtract 3 to 4 years for His ministry from this date we are
          left with a timeframe ranging from April (Nisan), 29 AD to April (Nisan), 30 AD, at which time He was "about thirty years of age".  Remembering that there is
          no year "0", when we now subtract these "about 30 years" we are left with a birth year for Jesus ranging from 3 to 2 BC, and an age at His death which
          ranges from 33 to 35 years.
     4 - Christians generally believe that Jesus came to fulfill all that the Old Covenant foreshadowed; including all the ceremonies and laws, all the special observances,
          and all the Nisan (Spring) Annual Feasts and Sabbaths.  The exceptions being the Tishrei (Fall) Annual Celebrations which Jesus will fulfill at His Second Advent.
          Messianic Rabbi Johathan Cahn makes a compelling case that, harkening back to the Creation and being the very Creator Himself (John 1:1-8), Jesus' fulfillment
          of Scripture also needed to include a commemoration of Creation - God's First Week - the Inspired pattern for each and every week which followed it.  And really,
          why would it not?  As John confirms in his first chapter, "... apart from Him not even one thing came into being that has come into being."

             The First Day of the First Month of the First Year - Creation - began on the First Day of the Week - Sunday.  The First Day of every month was biblically
          designated for:
                ●    sacrifice   - Numbers 28:11-15;
                ●    feasts   - I Samuel 20:5;
                ●    proclamation and celebration   - Numbers 10:10;
                ●    worship   - Ezekiel 46:1-3;
                ●    suspension of commerce   - Nehemiah 10:31; Amos 8:5; and
                ●    even elements of Sabbath such as rest and limiting servile work (source).
          And the first day of the first month - Nisan 1 - was clearly a special day among these special days.   - Exodus 12:2; Exodus 40

                       "Messiah fulfills the feasts but he also fulfills the theme of the feast," Cahn said. "Is there a day on the Hebrew calendar that would fulfill the theme
                    of the Messiah's birth?"  If there is, it would have to be Nisan 1.  It represents a new beginning.  "Nissan 1 is the calendar changer.  It breaks the
                    calendar," he said.  "Every calendar changed based on the birth of Messiah, from B.C. to A.D.  So it would put us back to Nisan 1."
                       Cahn goes into much more detail, and a brief summary of his work on this topic can be found here.

             Rabbi Cahn's work on this topic is invaluable but I believe he twice gets a little off track:

                ●    Cahn eventually goes on to select 6 BC as the year of Jesus' birth, I believe for two reasons:
                            i) As his work requires, 6 BC has its Nisan 1 occurring on a Sunday.  Not all calendars show this, but the BHCC does, and obviously Cahn agrees.
                           ii) With the mainstream's accepted year of death for King Herod the Great being 4 BC, 6 BC is the only year available to him.

                ●    Cahn concludes that, in commemorating Creation Jesus' birth would have aligned with creation's first day, Sunday. I believe it is more evidence-based
                        to suggest that Jesus would have been born on the 6th day of the week:
                            i) The first man Adam was created on the 6th Day of Creation.  Adam sinned and lost the eternality of everything good which God had given mankind.
                               The life and actions of the first Adam is what made it necessary for God Himself, in order to save mankind, to incarnate upon this Earth, live a perfect
                               sin-free life and then to give up His life in spite of its sinlessness - thus paying sin's penalty on behalf of each and every human being ever created.
                           ii) Jesus is the God and the Man who fulfilled this unbelievable task in order to save each of us from damnation and Eternal Death.  And as the Apostle
                               Paul so eloquently describes in 1 Corinthians 15:45-47:  Jesus is the "Last Adam".  The first Adam lost it all - The Last Adam bought it all back.
                          iii) Romans 5:14 describes "Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come."  The antitype always follows the pattern established by the type.
                           iv) In my view it is more consistent with Scripture to understand both Adams, the First and the Last, to have been born on the 6th Day of the week.
Jesus' Date of Birth - What We Can Conclude:

   After finding that the year 33 AD accommodated so perfectly the timeline requirements for Jesus' death, I was anxious to look for the year which best fulfills the requirements for His birth.  We know from scripture that Jesus lived "about" 33 to 35 years, the midpoint being 34 years.  If, as presented by Rabbi Cahn, Jesus' birth commemorated Creation, then:
    As the first Adam was born on the 6th Day of the Year, so the Last Adam - Jesus - was born on the 6th Day of the Year.  Jesus as the Last Adam is about to restore the Eternal Life that Adam & Eve lost when they believed and followed Satan.  If at this time Jesus turns 34 years of age, that is a number which adds up (3+4) to God's Perfect-7 (we'll see more on this later).  After His birthday He spends the next Perfect-7 Days (Nisan 7 to 13) preparing to complete His eternal-life-saving mission on Nisan 14 - PASSOVER - as Our Perfect Lamb and Our Perfect Atonement - OUR  PERFECT  REDEEMER.

   All this information strongly suggests 2-BC to be the year of Jesus' birth, but would the claim for 2 BC be made even stronger with Nisan 1 having occurred on a Sunday?  As before I allowed much more range than necessary, starting my search with 15 BC and ending it with 5 AD.  The BHCC revealed that in this 20-year span, only the year 2 BC saw its Nisan 1 fall on a Sunday!

   Without question, the best choice for dating Jesus' birth is Friday, Nisan 6 (April 11), 2 BC.
   The world has now existed for longer than six millennia from Ussher's Creation date (or any date based upon Jesus' birth), and we are clearly not yet in the Seventh Millennium as described in the book of Revelation.  We can therefore say that Ussher was wrong and that his 4004 BC date for Creation was too early.  But what if the Millennial Marker of Jesus' time on Earth was not His birth, but His death in 33 AD?  A 4000 years earlier date would set Creation at 3968 BC (there is no year "0"), and obviously we would still be in the sixth millennium nearing its end.
 
   The entire point of Jesus' earthly sojourn was to accomplish what He accomplished at the Cross.  He couldn't have done this if He had not first taken physical form and been born as a human, but if He had failed at the Cross His birth and His entire earthly life would have been in vain.  I believe it is the Redeemer's Death that should be considered the potential Millennial Marker.
 
   There is really no way to prove whether or not this is correct.  The best we can do is to go back 4000 years in time from Jesus' death to 3968 BC, and see if the BHCC software reveals the beginning of this Hebrew year - Nisan 1 - to indeed be a Sunday, as it needs to be if this is the year of Creation.  There is a one in seven chance that this would be so; but if it is, this again would add to our confidence in this entire process.  I was again anxious to see what would be revealed and went straight to the year 3968 BC where the BHCC showed that ... yes, Nisan 1, 3968 BC was a Sunday!
 
   Not only that, but the New Moon occurred a mere 48 minutes from the beginning of the day.  Forty-eight minutes is well within the margin of error for determining New Moons so far into the past, so the New Moon certainly could have occurred precisely at the beginning of the First Day of Creation.  Of course the moon didn't exist at that time - it wasn't created until the Fourth Day - but might God have created the moon in position, already with a four day crescent, pointing back precisely to:
"In The Beginning God Created ...."  Compelling!
Summary:

   In each case the Timeline as revealed by the BHCC software, either confirmed known facts, solved issues with timing or solved issues with conflicting biblical or historical detail.  Indeed, the revealed Timeline of:

     1 -  Jesus' Crucifixion:
           - made sense of the actions taken by the women who needed to observe Sabbaths - two of them on the same day - before preparing Jesus' body for burial.
 
     2 - Jesus' Birth:
          - perfectly aligned with known facts such as His ministry beginning at "about" age 30 and His death approximately four years later; and
          - was almost certainly on Friday, Nisan 6, in a week whose configuration commemorates that of the Creation Week.
 
     3 - Creation:
          - to have begun on Sunday, Nisan 1, 3968 BC, exactly four millennia before Jesus' crucifixion; and
          - with a New Moon perfectly synchronized to the beginning of the Brand New Millennium; the very First Millennium of God's Seven-Millennium Plan For The World.
 
Each of these dates, when properly determined according to the Hebrews' Biblical Calendar, aligns perfectly with and affirms the validity of
 
 
God's Seven-Millennium Plan For The World.
________________
   There was also the matter of accurately combining certain well established historical events that are described in the Bible, often with very good detail.  The prime example would be the declaration of the Persian King, Artexerxes I, whose decree to rebuild Jerusalem, when cojoined with historical detail and prophecy within the Bible, in one fell swoop brought us 490 years forward, precisely to our Redeemer's crucifixion upon Mount Calvary.

   Much more detail will be given in the next section.  For now I will say that the purpose of attempting to establish a completely comprehensive (and of course accurate) 7000-Year Timeline, was not to decipher and list as many people and events as possible.  Rather, it was attempted in order to learn if it is even possible to create such a Timeline.  If it is indeed possible (spoiler alert: it is), the prospect that God just may have a Seven-Millennium Plan For The World leaps from the status of a very Intriguing Theory, to that of a very Probable Theory.  The ramifications of such information, if it is proven true, are difficult to imagine.

   It really has been quite amazing and inspiring for me, how the events of the Bible have aligned throughout this process.  As these events have been researched and one by one added to the Biblical Timeline, I have only been encouraged that my belief in the God-Inspired Bible is well founded.  As the events continue to remarkably coordinate, both with one another and with accepted events and dates in history, my confidence in this process has grown proportionately.




Ready for a look into the Timeline for God's 7000 Years?
             But how can we know whether to use the post-dating or the ante-dating method to count the days and nights; and so how do we know that a Friday crucifixion is
          correct.  For two reasons we choose the ante-dating method which reveals the late Friday afternoon crucifixion:

             i) This method was the standard of use by the Hebrews in the Bible, so we use it unless there is a good reason to not use it.  I have never encountered such a reason.

            ii) Let's get back to the women who didn't have time to prepare Jesus' body because it was the Preparation day, which was soon ending, and they had to wait until the
                 end of the approaching Sabbath to do their work.  Which Sabbath were they waiting to be completed?  Was it the weekly 7th-day Sabbath; or was it the first day of
                 the Feast of Passover which is also a Sabbath?  We know it was the preparation day, but was it preparation for the weekly Sabbath or for the yearly Passover
                 Sabbath?  The day before each of these is a preparation (paraskeué) day.
                    Mark and Luke are very clear that it was the weekly Sabbath that was upon them:

                         "It was a preparation day, and a Sabbath was about to begin.  Now the women who had come with Him from Galilee followed, and they saw the tomb and
                         how His body was laid.  And then they returned and prepared spices and perfumes.  And on the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment.  But
                         on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb bringing the spices which they had prepared."  - Luke 23:54 - 24:1

                 But of course we know that because Jesus was fulfilling His role as antitype of the paschal lambs which foreshadowed Him, His death had to take place as theirs had,
                 on the preparation day for the Passover Feast; toward the end of the 14th Day of Nisan.  And John is equally clear that it was indeed this yearly Sabbath which was
                 approaching:

                         "Now it was the day of preparation for the Passover...."  - John 19:14
                         "(F)or that Sabbath was a high day...." - John 19:31, confirmed by multiple sources (example) as reference to the Sabbath days of God's yearly moedim.

                 This is not confusing in any way.  As our calendar has already shown us, in 33 AD when Jesus died, the two Sabbaths coincided on Nisan 15, and without question
                 Jesus was crucified in the afternoon of Nisan 14, a Friday.