Jesus’ Death & Resurrection: What days? Pt 1

Several denominations argue for a Wednesday crucifixion and a Saturday resurrection instead of the traditional Friday/Sunday scheme!

What is the argument advanced by these groups and how might we respond from the Bible?

The arguments for a Wednesday Crucifixion

1. Matthew 12.40

“ For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly, so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”

1.1 Christ’s entombment (time in the grave) would be “…a full three days and three nights which is equal to 72 hours.”

1.2 ‘Days and nights’ are not idiomatic but literal time frames.

2. John 19.14, 31

“ And it was the preparation of the Passover, and about the sixth hour and he saith unto the Jews,’Behold your King’.”

“ The Jews therefore, because it was the preparation, that the bodies should not remain upon the cross on the Sabbath day, (for that Sabbath day was an high day) besought Pilate that their legs might be broken and that they might be taken away.”

2.1 ‘Preparation’ was not the day before the seventh day Sabbath. but the day before the annual Passover Sabbath, which in that year, it is alleged, occurred on a Thursday. ‘Preparation’ then, was on Wednesday.

2.2 John, wishing to differentiate the Passover Sabbath from the seventh day Sabbath, calls it a ‘high day’.

3. Matthew 28.1 (5-6)

“ In the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the Sepulchre…”

3.1 ‘In the end of the Sabbath’ was when the women were told Christ was already resurrected. He arose then before ‘the end of the Sabbath’.

3.2 Counting backwards from Saturday afternoon over a 72-hour period (three days and three nights) one arrives at Wednesday afternoon for the crucifixion.

RESPONSES TO THIS ARGUMENT

1. The main point of the ‘sign of Jonah’ (Matthew 12.40) is not a literal 72-hour entombment but the miracle of deliverance.

1.1 In the same gospel of Matthew (16.4), the ‘sign of Jonah’ is mentioned, but without any time reference. The same is true in Luke 11.29-32, where Jonah and Christ themselves are regarded as signs or marvels designed to convince, because both were participants in starkly miraculous events of deliverance.

“Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites, because he appeared there as one sent by God after having been miraculously saved from the great fish (as it were raised from the dead) as proof that he was really sent by God. So also Jesus will, by His resurrection, prove conclusively that He has been sent by God as the Christ, the Messiah, the promised Redeemer.” ( Norval Geldenhuys, The New Testament Commentary(Luke), p.334)

1.2 In John 2.19, the Jews request a sign and Jesus replied, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” As in Matthew 12.40 a sign is requested and given – the resurrection.

1.3 “It is important to note that in Biblical times a fraction of a day or of a night was reckoned inclusively as representing the whole day or night. This method of reckoning is known as ‘inclusive reckoning’.” (SDA biblical scholar Samuele Bacchiocchi, The Time of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, p.23)

1.3.1 ‘A day and a night’ then in Biblical and rabbinical literature refers “not to an exact number of hours or of minutes but simply to a calendrical day, whether complete or incomplete.” (Bacchiocchi, cited above, p. 22)

1.3.2 In Esther 4.16, we have an example of ‘inclusive reckoning’. Esther declares, “ …fast ye for me and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day: I also and my maidens will fast likewise: then will I go in unto the King.”

In Esther 5.1, Esther went in unto the King ‘on the third day’. If the ‘three days and three nights’ fast was intended to be a literal 72-hour fast, Esther would have to go in unto the King ‘on the fourth day’.

1.3.3 In 1 Samuel 30.12 the abandoned Egyptian is said to have had nothing ‘for three days and three nights’ yet in v.13 he declares that he had been left behind ‘three days ago’. If the ‘three days and three nights’ were intended to be a literal 72-hour period, the servant would have had to say he was abandoned ‘four days ago’.

1.3.4 Rabbi Eleazar ben Azariah, who lived about AD 100, stated, “ A day and a night are an Onah (‘a portion of time’) and the portion of an Onah is as the whole of it.” ( Jerusalem Talmud, Shabbath 9, 3)

72 hours are not needed to explain three days and three nights!You just need any portion of three calendar days.

Rev Clinton Chisholm is a retired Jamaica Baptist Union pastor, holds an MA in biblical languages from Sheffield University in England and was a teaching assistant in Hebrew in the university’s Biblical Studies Department.