And only (x-1) nights. :smack:
The French use “huit jours” to denote one week, but at least they don’t call it “huit jours et huit nuits.”
Thailand also uses this convention — the 60-day entry stamp you might receive entering the country is only good for 59 nights. (Thai Immigration switches conventions with small numbers — a 7-day visa extension is good for 7 nights and parts of 8 days.)
Not precluding is not the same thing as requiring.
Doug K.,
re: “Not precluding is not the same thing as requiring.”
Agreed. What is your point?
You keep saying these statements do not preclude there being three parts of both day and night, but you haven’t explained why you think so. On the third day means that three days have passed, but only means three nights have passed if the statement was made at night, which seems unlikely in an era without artificial illumination.
Plus, well, the best evidence we have of the idiom is the book of Matthew itself, where both the “three days and three nights” and “day before to the day after the Sabbath” are used without anyone seeing a contradiction. So it at least could be interpreted that way, whether commonly or not.
Perhaps, since you’re not willing to accept anyone’s answer here, you might tell us what you think. Please don’t forget to cover things like errors in translation, and common misconceptions of the day, etc.
ETA, Nava pretty well hit it on the head. The answer is in her response.
BigT,
re: “You keep saying these statements do not preclude there being three parts of both day and night…”
Select one of those statements and tell me why there is no way that at least a part of each one of the daytimes and a least a part of each one of the night times could have occurred.
Morgenstern,
re: “Perhaps, since you’re not willing to accept anyone’s answer here, you might tell us what you think.”
I think that no one has yet provided any examples which show that a daytime or a night time was forecast to be involved with an event when no part of the daytime or no part of the night time could have taken place.
So?
Are you wandering around the internet looking for an answer that will please you?
This is not a debate if it is nothing more than you demanding answers that you can reject. Obviously, we have failed to satisfy your desires. If you have nothing more, I will close this thread.
[ /Moderating ]
While I doubt that this will make you any happier, I will note that Matthew has long been recognized as bending a lot of references from Hebrew Scriptures to make his case to a primarily Jewish audience that those scriptures foretold the coming of Jesus. Using a reference to Jonah as prefiguring the death and resurrection of Jesus, even if he had to fudge the numbers a bit, is consistent with other verses that he indicated were prophetic of Jesus’s life.
All the Gospels use a reference to three days, although they also tend to refer to to the resurrection “on the third day,” which is consistent with the numeration of days in use in that culture, where one would begin counting on the day of an event and then conclude the count on the day of completion. So references to “three days” and references to “on the third day” are both consistent with the way in which days were then numbered in conversation. The passage in Mt 12:40 differs with its explicit reference to both three days and to three nights, but that would seem to be a case of Matthew getting carried away with his parallel to Jonah rather than an actual recitation of the claim of Jesus.
Beyond that, you are unlikely to get an answer that satisfies you.
tomndebb,
re: " If you have nothing more, I will close this thread."
You might as well close it since no one seems to understand what I am asking.
You asked the same basic question 4 years ago? Has this been on your mind the whole time?
So, is there a single Greek word that means “night days”? Is the usage of “three nights” in Greek therefore more consistent (or at least ambiguous)? Could the issue be, in part, poor translation into English?
I think your enquiries need to be into Hebrew more than Greek. Matthew is writing in Greek, but he is very consciously lifting the “three days and three nights” language from the Jonah text, which of course was written in Hebrew.
Yes, for 1222 days and 1221 nights.
Since this topic hasn’t been closed, perhaps someone new looking in will know of some examples.
Examples have been given. They were also given in your previous thread.
It was not closed because it dried up and fell off the front page of the forum.
Since this is your third separate attempt to have people tell you what you want to hear on the topic, you have now exhausted its potential.
Do not start any more threads on this topic unless you can provide a citation to a serious discussion by actual scholars on this topic. (Perhaps not even then, since such a discussion should satisfy your curiosity.)
This thread is closed.