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Mark says, “And it was the third hour, and they crucified him” (Mark 15:25), about nine in the morning by Jewish reckoning. John says that when Pilate brought Jesus out and said “Behold your King,” it “was the preparation of the passover, and about the sixth hour” (John 19:14), about noon, and only then “delivered he him therefore unto them to be crucified.” How could He be on the cross at the third hour and still before Pilate at the sixth?

Preferred: John, writing late in the century among Gentiles in Asia, counts the hours from midnight, as the Romans reckoned the civil day. His “sixth hour” is six in the morning, when Pilate gave sentence; Mark’s “third hour,” counted from sunrise as the Jews did, is nine, when the procession reached Golgotha. This fits Mark’s own account that the council met “straightway in the morning” and delivered Jesus to Pilate (Mark 15:1), and it fits John’s other hours: two disciples staying with Jesus from “about the tenth hour” (John 1:39) reads naturally as ten in the morning, and the nobleman’s son healed “yesterday at the seventh hour” (John 4:52) as seven in the evening, when the journey home could not be finished that day.

Also given: the day was divided into four watches of three hours, each named by the hour that began it. All from nine until noon was “the third hour.” Near the end of that watch it was both still “the third hour” (Mark) and “about the sixth hour” (John). Gill notes, after Lightfoot, that Mark doesn’t say they crucified Him at the third hour, but “it was the third hour, and they crucified him.”

Mark agrees with the others on the darkness from the sixth hour to the ninth (Mark 15:33), so he isn’t setting a different timetable; the two Gospels count the same morning differently.