Matthew 12:40 quotes the Messiah saying that He would be in the “heart of the earth” for 3 days and 3 nights. I think a majority of folks believe that the crucifixion took place on the 6th day of the week, with the resurrection taking place on the 1st day of the week. This period of time, however, would only allow for 2 night times. To account for this discrepancy, it is frequently explained that the verse is using common Jewish idiomatic language of the time.
I wonder if anyone (who thinks that the crucifixion took place on the 6th day of the week and who thinks that the “heart of the earth” is referring to the tomb) knows of any writing which shows a phrase from the first century or before which states a specific number of days and/or a specific number of nights when the actual period of time couldn’t have included at least parts of each one of the specific number of days and at least parts of each one of the specific number of nights?
S*o shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. That Christ means himself by the “son of man”, there is no reason to doubt; and his being laid in a tomb, dug out of a rock, is sufficient to answer this phrase, “the heart of the earth”, in distinction from the surface of it; but some difficulty arises about the time of his continuing there, and the prediction here made agreeable to the type: for it was on the sixth day of the week, we commonly call “Friday”, towards the close, on the day of the preparation for the sabbath, and when the sabbath drew on, that the body of Christ was laid in the sepulchre; where it lay all the next day, which was the sabbath of the Jews, and what we commonly call “Saturday”; and early on the first of the week, usually called “Sunday”, or the Lord’s day, he rose from the dead; so that he was but one whole day, and part of two, in the grave. To solve this difficulty, and set the matter in a clear light, let it be observed, that the three days and three nights, mean three natural days, consisting of day and night, or twenty four hours, and are what the Greeks call “night days”; but the Jews have no other way of expressing them, but as here; and with them it is a well known rule, and used on all occasions, as in the computation of their feasts and times of mourning, in the observance of the passover, circumcision, and divers purifications, that , “a part of a day is as the whole” (n): and so, whatever was done before sun setting, or after, if but an hour, or ever so small a time, before or after it, it was reckoned as the whole preceding, or following day; and whether this was in the night part, or day part of the night day, or natural day, it mattered not, it was accounted as the whole night day: by this rule, the case here is easily adjusted; Christ was laid in the grave towards the close of the sixth day, a little before sun setting, and this being a part of the night day preceding, is reckoned as the whole; he continued there the whole night day following, being the seventh day; and rose again early on the first day, which being after sun setting, though it might be even before sun rising, yet being a part of the night day following, is to be esteemed as the whole; and thus the son of man was to be, and was three days and three nights in the grave; and which was very easy to be understood by the Jews; and it is a question whether Jonas was longer in the belly of the fish. *
Thanks for the link, but I’m afraid it doesn’t show any actual examples where a daytime and/or a night time was said to be involved with an event when no part ot the daytime or no part of the night time could have occurred.
Since we’re well into the new year perhaps there will be someone new looking in who knows of examples as requested in the OP. And again, remember that the purpose of this topic is not to discuss how long the Messiah was in the heart of the earth. However, there are those who say that Matthew 12:40 is using common Jewish idiomatic language. But in order to say that it was common, one would have to know of other instances where the same pattern had to have been used. I am simply looking for some of those instances, scriptural or otherwise. So far no one has come forth with any.
Well, in Gen 42:17 Joseph puts his brothers in prison “for three days”, but in the immediately following verse he releases them “on the third day”.
And in 1 Sam 30:12 we have an account of an Egyptian slave who “had not eaten any food or drunk any water for three days and three nights”, but in the next verse we find that this is because his master abandoned him “when I became ill three days ago”.
So it does seem that “three days” or “three days and three nights” can refer to a period which is less than 72 hours, provided it does contain all or part of at least three distinct days. In general there seems to be a fairly easy transition between phrases like “for X days”, “X days ago” and “on the Xth day”.
I’m not convinced, though, that this is a full explanation of the quote in Mt 12:40. In the first place, Matthew writes in Greek, not Hebrew. Yes, he’s putting these words in the mouth of Jesus, who presumptively spoke Aramaic, but, still. In the second place, he introduces the “three days and three nights” language specifically to emphasise the parallel with Jonah. Luke tells the same story (Lk 11:29-3) but without mentioning the specific period. (And Mark tells the story without mentioning Jonah at all.) So it seems possible that this detail is not strict reportage, but a typically Matthean flourish, added to call attention to, and underline, the point being made. And if it’s not based on anything Jesus actually said, then the likelihood of its being a transliteration of a Hebrew/Aramaic idiom is not high.
It’s worthing noting, obviously, that Matthew himself clearly didn’t think there was any contradiction, or any likely cause of confusion, in putting “three days and three nights” in Chapter 12 and a Friday-night-to-Sunday-morning account in Chapters 27 and 28.
According to my uncle, who is a scholar of ancient Hebrew literature, it was common practice around the first century to check on a corpse that had been laid in a tomb after three days (or even not to put them in a tomb for three days, more in a minute), because of the axiom, or adage, that a person wasn’t truly dead until they were “three days dead.” Someone who appeared dead, but was again alive less than three days later was not thought to have experienced any kind of miraculous resurrection, but simply to have revived in a manner consistent with the natural order. (The commandment to bury someone immediately was gotten around by saying that they were buried immediately after death, which wasn’t declared for three days.)
Given what wasn’t known about states of consciousness, it certainly was possible that enough people knew of a friend of a friend who had emerged from some kind of coma before they died of dehydration, which could easily happen in three days in that part of the world, that the axiom could be more or less self-fulfilling.
Anyway, if Matthew wanted people in Judah in the first century to believe that Jesus was truly dead, and his resurrection was miraculous, Jesus needed to be three days dead.
Now, it is true for purposes of a mitzvah like counting the days to circumcision, the day of birth was one day. My son is a good example. He was born four minutes before midnight, but the clock for his bris started at midnight 23 hours and 56 minutes earlier. He was technically about 7 2/3 days when he was circumcised in the afternoon. He could have had a morning circumcision, when he was just 7 days and 7 hours old. But circumcising him on the 9th day, when he was 8 days and 7 hours would have been wrong.
I honestly have no idea how the “three days dead” was calculated, although one would think that three nights would be necessary for someone who died during the day. You could die at 6pm, and be declared the morning after the third night, but I honestly don’t know.
I do know that this is probably the reason Matthew hammers home the “three days” point. The fact the he pushes it in the face of a discrepancy actually adds some veracity to the account, if you ask me.
Thanks for the comments, but I’m afraid I don’t see where they provide any examples which show that a daytime or a night time was forecast to be involved with an event when no part ot the daytime or no part of the night time could have occurred.
I am 48 years old; I am in my 49th year. He died on Friday, resurrected on Sunday, so resurrected in the third day. And in general, in the Bible “days” do not equal “24h” (see tons of exegesis on Genesis).
Nava,
re: “I am 48 years old; I am in my 49th year. He died on Friday, resurrected on Sunday, so resurrected in the third day. And in general, in the Bible “days” do not equal “24h” (see tons of exegesis on Genesis).”
Well, why limit it to forecasts? If people spoke like this about past events, can we not have assumed they would use the same idioms when speaking of future events?
And they did speak like this about past events - in the Genesis quote that I mentioned, the servant was abandoned “three days ago”, which would suggest that (more or less) three days and two nights have passed since abandonment, and yet this period is referred to as “three days and three nights”. So is that not exactly the idiomatic usage that you are looking for?
UDS,
re: “Well, why limit it to forecasts? If people spoke like this about past events, can we not have assumed they would use the same idioms when speaking of future events?”
Forecasts or past events will be fine. But so far no one has shown examples of either one.
re: “And they did speak like this about past events - in the Genesis [actually 1 Samuel] quote that I mentioned, the servant was abandoned ‘three days ago’, which would suggest that (more or less) three days and two nights have passed since abandonment, and yet this period is referred to as ‘three days and three nights’. So is that not exactly the idiomatic usage that you are looking for?”
I’m afraid not. Nothing in the account preculdes at least a part of each one of 3 daytimes and at least a part of each one of 3 night times.
rsrats Jesus was not crucified on the 6th day of the week (Friday)… the “day before the Sabbath” that the scripture refers to (Mark 15:42, Luke 23:54) is an ANNUAL Sabbath (The first day of the 7 Day Passover or Days of Unleavened Bread) not a WEEKLY Sabbath. The Bible means 3 complete days and nights, or the Sign of Jonah, (Matthew 12:38-45)
I have some visuals and more info if you are interested in more about this topic.
Just curious – why then do Christians today hold Good Friday to be the commemoration of the crucifixion, and Easter Sunday to be the commemoration of the resurrection?
I can buy that “three days” would mean “parts of three different days”, i.e., Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. But what would the “and three nights” then mean? There was one night between Friday and Saturday, and one between Saturday and Sunday. That’s only two.
We have to bear in mind that, in the Hebrew idiom, a night (period of darkness) does not fall in two separate (24-hour) days. A named (24-hour) day runs from sunset to the following sunset, and includes the whole of one period of darkness, and the whole of the following period of daylight.
So, if strictly interpreted, a period of “three days and three nights” should mean three 24-hour days, starting at sunset and continuing until the sunset approximately 72 hours later.
So if a period continues for three days and three nights, and is then terminated by some event, if we’re being strictly logical that event must occur no earlier than the start of the *fourth[/i[ day.
It follows that, if “three days and three nights” is an acceptable description of a period that is ended by an event “on the third day”, the idiom is not used as punctiliously as it might be. It’s clear than in a phrase like “three days and three nights”, a part of a (24-hour) day is being counted as a day and a night. I see no reason to assume that it must be a part which includes at least some daylight and at least some darkness, if “a day and a night” is the idiom for a period of 24 hours which could be named as a day of the week, except that we don’t actually know (or aren’t actually saying) which day it is.
In Matthew’s usage, if we assume crucifixion on Friday and resurrection on Sunday, then we can only account for his usage if by saying that he is counting a part-(day+night) at each end of the period as a full (day+night). There are examples of people apparently doing this for at least one of the days at the end of a period, so why not two? On the other hand, I concede that we don’t have any examples in which people clearly do it to count two abbreviated days as full days.
But, as I have already pointed out, Matthew is stretching the language a bit, for rhetorical purposes. The scriptural account of Jonah specifies that he “was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights” (Jonah 1:17). In echoing this language Matthew isn’t seeking to give a journalistic account of the entombment, but to underline the parallel between Jesus’s entombment and Jonah’s enfishment. (I am copyrighting this word.) For this purpose it doesn’t actually matter whether Jesus was in the tomb for more than 72 hours, or between 48 and 72 hours, or less than 48 hours, or less than 36 hours. All that is necessary is that he have been in the tomb long enough to make echoing the language of Jonah a colourable rhetorical flourish.
Would Aramaic speakers normally have used a phrase like “three days and three nights” to describe a period which encompassed at least part of each of three named days, and the whole of one? Possibly, though I don’t know that. But I don’t think we need to establish that they did in order to explain or justify Matthew’s used of the phrase in this particular context.
Easter has different origins altogether… Easter is derived from Eostre or Ostara. a goddess of spring and fertility. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the death and resurrection of Christ.
The word Easter is supposedly derived from a pagan goddess of that name, although the evidence for this is actually pretty tenuous. (The claim is made by the Venerable Bede in the eighth century, but his claim is about a cult said to have been practiced centuries before his time, and he gives no evidence for it. Apart from Bede’s claim, we have no evidence at all that there was ever a goddess so named.)
The feast which English speakers call Easter comes from the Jewish Passover and the early Christian celebrations of the Resurrection, and was being celebrated at about the time it now is for centuries before anyone attached to it any name which might or might not be connected with a pagan goddess called Eostre. Germanic peoples weren’t Christianised before the early middle ages. Non-Germanic European languages all called - and still call - this feast by a name derived from the Hebrew Pesach.