How can you justify a Good Friday cruicifixion and an Easter Sunday resurrection from Matthew 12:40?

Question

Mt 12:40 For as Jonas 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.

Jonah 1:17 Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

max: Friday night, Saturday day, Saturday night........where do you get 3 days?

Steve: John 11:9 Jesus answered, Are there not twelve hours in the day?

Day=12 hours
Night=12 hours

1 day + 1 night=24 hours. Still no 3 days in your answer.

Jeanster: Maybe the problem is that the Good Friday/Easter Tradition is a LIE?

mlcros, sorry that is just another elaborate justification for Sunday worship and is not showing the chronological order of the Passover week of 30AD ( the correct date). The link is not working to send you to a site where you can view calenders from that time . Abigal and the others who answered that the crucifixion was on a Wednesday are correct. Sunset Wednesday would have started the 1st night in the grave and began the High Day Sabbath, Thursday daytime 1st day, Thrusday sunset began 2nd night, Friday Daytime, day 2, the prep day for the Sabbah when the women prepared the spices to finish the burial, Friday sunset began night 3 and the weekly SAbbath,when they rested, Saturday daytime would be day 3 and the resurrection would have been late afternoon 72 hours after the death on the stake or cross. Sunday, daytime, the women were taking the spices to do the final prep of the body for entombment, He was already risen, I don't know of anywhere it says He just arose, do you?

Should we cling to tradition in attempts to make sense of scriptures? The idea that the resurrection was on Sunday morning is based on tradition, not fact.

Answer 1

It is another lie. He was put in the grave about sundown--- He came out about sundown. He rose at sundown of the Seventh day (Saturday) He was killed on Wednesday. It was before the Sabbath of Unleavened Bread that He was killed. The navel observatory confirms that it was probably Wed. (due to the phase of the moon)

Answer 2

There is no way that Yeshua died on Friday & rose on sunday
Its not 3 day & 3 nights.
It had to be a Wednesday night that Passover started that
year & so Yeshua had to be in the tomb by sundown, Thurs,
Friday make 3 nights. Thursday,Friday, Saturday make 3
days & He rose at the end of Shabbat, still saturday as He is
Lord of the sabbath. When some of the women went to the
tomb on the 1st day of the week it was still saturday night, &
the stone was rolled away.
The reason we get so confused is we do not understand the
Jewish/Hebrew way of doing things, which is biblical.
And the evening & the morning were the 1stday, 2nd day etc.

There is no proof that Yeshua Messiah rose on the 1st day of
the week, all 4 accounts of the story say that the people went
there on the 1st day of the week.
Passover day changes every year & it was not the weekly
sabbath that he had to be in the tomb before sunset.

Answer 3

This is a VERY good question. I don't have an answer, but I do know that there are a lot of traditions instituted by the Mother Church that are not necessarily biblical. Easter Sunday (the actual day) is not necessarily the actual memorial of the resurrection of Christ. It backs up to before Christ was born and was actually a Pagan Day of worhip, read more:

The origin of Easter

The English word Easter and the German Ostern come from a common origin (Eostur, Eastur, Ostara, Ostar), which to the Norsemen meant the season of the rising (growing) sun, the season of new birth. The word was used by our ancestors to designate the Feast of New Life in the spring. The same root is found in the name for the place where the sun rises (East, Ost). The word Easter, then, originally meant the celebration of the spring sun, which had its birth in the East and brought new life upon earth. This symbolism was transferred to the supernatural meaning of our Easter, to the new life of the Risen Christ, the eternal and uncreated Light. Based on a passage in the writings of Saint Bede the Venerable (735), the term Easter has often been explained as the name of an Anglo-Saxon goddess (Eostre), though no such goddess is known in the mythologies of any Germanic tribe. Modern research has made it quite clear that Saint Bede erroneously interpreted the name of the season as that of a goddess.

Source: Francis X. Weiser, Handbook of Christian Feasts and Customs (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1958), p. 211. Copyright 1952 by Francis X. Weiser.


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What means the term Easter itself? It is not a Christian name. It bears the Chaldean origin on its very forehead. Easter is nothing else than Astarte, one of the titles of Beltis, the queen of heaven, whose name, as pronounced by the people of Ninevah, was evidently identical with that now in common use in this country. That name, as found by Layard on the Assyrian monuments is Ishtar.

Source: The Two Babylons, by the Rev. Alexander Hislop, published 1943 and 1959 in the U.S. by Loizeaux Brothers, Neptune, New Jersey, page 103.


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The word Easter, which comes from the Anglo-Saxon, is a term derived from the pagan goddess of the dawn.

Source: The Catholic Encyclopedia, Revised and Updated, Copyright 1987, Robert C. Broderick, Editor, Thomas Nelson Publishers, page 177.


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So, there is no doubt that the word Easter is not Christian, but pagan in origin. Now as to the date itself, anyone who has studied the Bible knows that the crucifixion and resurrection happen during the Jewish festival of the Passover, which began on the 14th of Nisan. For millennia the Jews have observed this festival week of Passover / Feast of Unleaven Bread beginning on the 14th of Nisan. Since Jesus died on the 14th of Nisan, then the resurrection happened on the 16th of Nisan.

Ever notice how your birthday falls on different days of the week, from one year to the next? One year it might be on a Monday and the next on a Wednesday. Such is the case with Passover. That being true, then why is the resurrection day always celebrated on a Sunday? Each year, if you were to follow the Bible, it should fall on a different day of the week and only occasionally on a Sunday. In the early church this issue caused quite a controversy for the minds that inquire.

Answer 4

Jesus used three days and three nights. He never mentioned that it was 24 hour periods but rather three days and three individual nights. Regardless of the Jewish method of time (days starting at sundown the night before) Jesus needed three days and three nights. Nowhere in scripture does it say Jesus was killed on Friday but it does say that Jesus rose on the first day of the week before sunrise (Matthew 28:1, Mark 16:1-4, Luke 24:1-2, and John 20:1. This is Sunday notice that Matthew's account says the day after Sabbath (on Saturday). This gives a Friday crucifixion 2 days and 2 nights (Friday (day), Friday (night), Saturday (day), and Saturday (night). Even if you count Sunday day you would still be missing one night. This would push the date of death back to Thursday which would then give you three days and three nights. The concept of Good Friday actually pulls from pagan traditions.

You might ask, what about the Sabbath. Jesus died the day before the Sabbath day which I already established is Saturday, Mark 15:42. You need to understand the Law of Moses to grasp this concept. John 19:31 talks about Jesus dying on the day of preparation which is before the High Sabbath day of Passover, Exodus 12. Notice that during the feast of Passover there are two Sabbaths, one to start the feast and the other to close it. The Passover Sabbath does not have to fall on a Saturday. It may or may not fall on a Saturday depending upon the year similar to how your birthday is on different days of the week in different years. The first Sabbath to start the feast of Passover is after the day of Preparation when they would kill the Passover lamb, the Sabbath would start at sundown on that day. Jesus died on the day of preparation, Matthew 27:62. This is partially why Jesus is also called Our Passover Lamb. Matthew 28:1 actually uses the word Sabbaths not Sabbath in the Greek. They had two Sabbaths in a row, the high Sabbath of Passover on Friday and then the regular Sabbath on Saturday. This then makes sense that Jesus died on Thursday and rose before dawn on Sunday. This gives three days and three nights and makes sense with scripture.

Cute, but there are some issues with that. The Jews would have counted Wednesday as a day. A part of the day would have been considered as a full. You would have 4 days in that theory. Another thing to consider is that in the year A.D. 30 Passover fell on Friday not Thursday. The sabbath for Passover would have been Friday. Follow this link for study. http://www.pwrtc.com/~bcc/Day.html I agree with you that Good Friday is a man made tradition, but a careful examination into scriptures makes it impossible to read a Saturday resurrection but rather a Sunday night resurrection just before Sunday at dawn.

Answer 5

The standard answer is that Jesus was buried over parts of three days -- Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

This is one of those "embarrassing" verses that shows how little the evangelists altered their source material. It would have been so easy for Matthew to leave this out, due to the problem you raise, rather than to keep material that the evangelist was certain came from Jesus.

One solution to the problem is that the earthly Jesus, human as he was, did not have full knowledge of the future. Same as us -- we only have partial knowledge of God's mysteries. To the best of Jesus's understanding, the Jonah story held the key to God's plan for him. Pretty good guess, though, wasn't it?

Dear Lone Ranger: If this is a lie, it is the most poorly-concealed lie in history!

Answer 6

This is where pagan tradition got mixed in with the truth.

Colway, wolfeblaybe, and onefinefeller, are putting forth one of the most ridiculous lies ever spoken from the pulpit, and that is that the Jews see "any part of a day" as a whole day. Pure unadulterated nonsense!

Even if you follow the false, christianized concept that any part of a day constitutes the whole, you still have the "three nights" issue to deal with. It falls apart, as any second grader could tell you.

Answer 7

And this is why the atheist truly believe that we have all married our sister/brother, live in trailers, have 10 kids each and a pig in our living room. Christians can't count to three.

No. Its not possible. It especially falls apart when you take into account that Mary went to the tomb while it was yet dark so you don't even have part of the third day.

You still only have two nights.

Remember according to Jewish custom based on scripture (Gen.1) the new day begins at sundown so its a night/day = 1 day and not a Midnight to Midnight =1 day and that days were counted as separate from the night. There were hours in a day and watches in the night.

You can not reconcile Good Friday Easter Sunday. It's a fabrication out of whole cloth. You may as well stand up in your pulpit on Sundays and teach that the Easter Bunny is real because truthfully.. Thats the real meaning of Easter. A sacrifice to the fertility goddess of ancient Babylon. She came down from heaven in a huge egg and a bunny was her symbol. They deflowered virgins on the altar on Friday and on Sunday butchered the children of the deflowered virgins from the previous year on that same altar. They would then collect the blood and dye eggs in it and offer the eggs up on the alter.

Do you really think God is please dwith you keeping this day to honor His Son? You are only fooling yourself!

Repent! The kingdom of God is at hand!

Answer 8

Because you're confusing our idea of a 24 hour day with the then-prevalent Jewish concept of a day. They considered a "day" to mean any part of the day -- not just the complete 24 hour cycle.

Friday would have been one "day," Saturday was two days, and early Sunday morning would have been the third day to a Jewish person of that time.

Answer 9

Hebrews have a diiferent concept of "a day" than the western culture. First of all their day begins and ends when the sun goes down, not comes up. And not midnight. And any part of the day, was considered all day. This is an example of one of the many bible contradictions that many non-christians whine about, but it is a difference in culture. It is stupid AND ignorant to assume that something that was written almost 2,000 years ago, in a society foreign to most "western culture" people was written for them. When you study the bible you also have to study ancient middle east customs, not modern western philosophy

Answer 10

Died on Friday, rose on Sunday.

So he was in the grave Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

I count 3 days.