A small book my father gave to my younger daughter for her tenth birthday remains etched in my memory, and it unintentionally initiated my quest to discover the truth about the momentous last week of Jesus. The book was called Great Men of History. Why have I never forgotten this book? Because on the first page it listed every person described in the book and it gave their dates of birth and death, but against Jesus it had: ‘Born 4 bc? Died ad 30?’ Every other person listed on the front page – Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Christopher Columbus, and so on – was given a definite date of birth and death. Jesus was the only person whose dates of birth and of death were followed by question marks.

How strange, I thought. Jesus made a huge mark upon history, much greater than Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great or any of the other ‘historical greats’ listed. Yet the author of the book did not know the years in which Jesus was born and died. In fact historians and biblical scholars today are still uncertain about these dates. For example, the New International Version (NIV) Study Bible states regarding the life of Christ: ‘Exact dates, even year dates, are generally unknown.’