How old was Jesus when he died?

We have a pretty good idea of the year Jesus was born and the year he died, so we can have a pretty good idea of how old he was when he died. The deal, though, is that people back then weren’t concerned with EXACTLY what time it was, the way we are today. They didn’t have wrist watches; they didn’t have clocks in every room of their homes; they didn’t have paper calendars and computers to keep them accurate. They simply weren’t as concerned with writing down the EXACT times and dates like we would.

But the Bible does give us some information about the date of Jesus’ birth. Read Matthew 2:1.

Also, ancient records exist that show that King Herod died in April of 4 BC. There was certainly some amount of time between Herod’s command to have all the baby boys killed and his death. So how old would that make the infant Jesus in 4 BC? Well, Jesus was probably born within the last three years of Herod’s rule - making his birth somewhere around 6 BC.

Now let’s look at Jesus’ death. Again, while the Bible does not clearly and exactly tell us, evidence does exist in the records of the kings and governors of that period, and this information strongly supports the Bible. From those records, we know that Pontius Pilate was removed from office late in the year 36. Since it was Pilate who order Jesus’ crucifixion, 36 is the latest year we can use to figure our how long he lived.

So if Jesus was born no later than 6 B.C., and was crucified no later than 36 A.D., then the oldest he could have been was about 42 years old.

Now because the dates are not exact, he could have been younger. Many people will argue that he was about 10 years younger than that. Well, maybe. Again, ancient people (and the writers of the Bible) weren’t as concerned about time as we are, and the Bible doesn’t exactly say. It is safe to say that Jesus was between 33 and 42 years old when he was crucified.