How Old Was Jesus When He Died On The Cross?
Bodie Hodge, M.Sc., B.Sc., PEI
Biblical Authority Ministries, August 18, 2025 (Donate)
I recently came across a rather odd meme on social media (I’m
sure you’ve seen plenty and know what I mean!). But this particular meme and
description left me shaking my head.
The meme and associated text were trying to draw a
connection between man’s 33 vertebrates and that Jesus was “33 years old” when
He died.
So why did I sigh? Well, Jesus wasn’t 33 when He was
crucified. Thus, any arbitrary analogy of connection relating to this falls
short. But this got me thinking that there is a lot of misunderstanding about
Jesus’s age like when He died and some basic time markers at that time.
Year Zero?
Consider for a moment that Jesus wasn’t born in year 0
either. Many tend to think this and it even made it through all edits of Back
to the Future Part 1.
The problem here is that there is no year zero! We literally
go from 1 BC (before Christ) to AD 1 (Anno Domini; which means “in the year
of our Lord” in Latin).
Offensive to many Christians, is the neo-counterfeit dating
system BCE and CE which is technically “Before Common Era” and “Common Era”; though
many Christians commonly denote this informally as “Before Christian Era” and “Christian
Era” since all this is still in reference to Christ entrance into the world in
the flesh. Many Christians continue to use the BC/AD dates instead of the secular
humanistic dating system being imposed on the masses.
So Why Is 33 Years Old Wrong?
Most chronologists since the inception of the BC/AD system in
the first half millennium have put Christ’s birth before AD 1. The reason for
this was due to a minor error of the gent, Dionysius, calculated this in AD 530s.
He developed the system and he got close, but was off by a few years for the
birth of Christ.
The simple fact was he didn’t have access to everything he
needed to be precise. Surprising, he was very close—as others have mimicked what
he did chronologically and he was just about 3-5 years off as one gets close to
Christ’s birth.
For instance, Herod died about 3-4 BC. So, the famous Archbishop
James Ussher date, with Christ born a bout 5/4 BC makes a lot of since and
works well within the text of Scripture.
Most have Jesus born at 4 BC (Ussher had it at the cusp of
5/4 BC—so there was a full year of 4 BC to be counted. Others have put it at the
end of 4 BC so really a full first year was 3 BC. So, there is a margin of
about 1 year plus/minus. Of course, there are exceptions with some chronologists.
But what does this mean? It means that Jesus was not 33, but
instead must be tallied as 33 AD years plus 4 or 5 BC years, minus 1 (since there
is no year zero) putting Him about 36/37 when He died on the Cross.
Final Remarks
Although, I applaud Dionysus because time markers were often
based on the reign of kings (4th year of King David, or 8th
year of Augustus Caesar, etc.)—Dionysus posited that we should be using the time
marker based on the King of Kings whose reign will never end.
His chronology was already widely in place by the time
people realized the glitch. So instead of changing all the dates, researchers
simply pushed the date of Christ’s birth back where it should be and left the
system in place.
Of course, this confuses people today and many commonly think
33 years, because Christ was crucified in AD 33. But really, He was a little
older by about 3-4 years.
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Bodie Hodge, Ken Ham's son in law, has been an apologist
since 1998 helping out in various churches and running an apologetics website.
He spent 21 years working at Answers in Genesis as a speaker,
writer, and researcher as well as a founding news anchor for Answers
News. He was also head of the Oversight Council.
Bodie launched Biblical Authority Ministries in
2015 as a personal website and it was organized officially in 2025 as a
501(c)(3). He has spoken on multiple continents and hosts of US states in
churches, colleges, and universities. He is married with four children.
