have looked at my Bible and done some research to discover
that the traditional view of Easter has got something wrong.
Oh no.....? Oh yes.

Traditionallly we celebrate Easter Friday or Good Friday as the day Jesus
died and was entombed (buried) and Easter Sunday as the
day that he was resurrected.

Jesus did not Die on Good Friday.
Gasp....He died the day before. A thursday, at 3pm in the arvo.
He was only buried (Entombed on the Friday)
Bring on Good Thursday..

According to Mathew 12:40 Jesus had to be dead for three days and three nights “For as Jonah was three days and
three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will
be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”

The traditional period from Friday afternoon to Sunday at Dawn does not cover three days and three nights.

A traditonal timeline would go from death to resurrection like this.
FrIday Arvo (Death) - Friday night - Saturday - Saturday night - Sunday at dawn (Resurrection)

This adds up to two nights - Friday and Saturday night
One full day on Saturday plus Friday afternoon and Sunday morning.

After doing some basic research I discovered that the Jewish view of a day is to start from Sunrise on one day starting at hour one to hour twelve and go to Sunset on the next day starting from hour one to hour twelve giving
a full twenty four hour day.

This view of a day cuts across our view of the day being during daylight hours only.

Note:

Mathew 28:1 says that the Resurrection was “After the Sabbath, at dawn on
the first day of the week”.

Jewish custom makes Sunday the first day of the week starting at
Sunset on the Sabbath (Saturday).

This means that Jesus was Resurrected on Sunday at dawn or first
light (Sometime between Midnight Saturday night and 6am on Sunday ).

We know that Jesus burial happened on preparation day being the
day before the Sabbath, a Friday. According to Luke 23:54’ It was
Preparation Day, and the Sabbath was about to begin.” at the time that jesus body was to be entombed.

But in fact this cannot be the same day that he died on the cross
because of the contradiction with mathew 12:40.

Note:
Three full Jewish days include three consecutive lots of
sunsets followed by sunrises and imiportantly cross over to include the night periods.

The timeline looks like this.

Jesus Death +++++++++++++++++++++++++ Jesus Resurrection
at 3pm (The 9th Hour,
See Mathew 27:46) +++++++++++++++++++ At Dawn (After Midnight
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Saturday or First light Sunday)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Being on the Third day)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Day One----------------- Day Two ------------------------- Day Three

Thurs \ Friday ******* Friday \ Saturday *********** Saturday \ Sunday
Sunset \ Sunrise ******* Sunset \ Sunrise ************ Sunset \ Sunrise

The Sunset period ends at 6pm
Each Sunrise period ends at 6am
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And there we have it - three full Jewish days, including the nights !!

You see nowhere in the Bible does it say the day on which Jesus was crucified, the main clue to working out the timeline according to days of the week is based around the Jewish Sabbath.

This clue about the day of the week is only helpful in relation to Jesus burial, or entombment which happened after his Death. Go figure.

Praise God.

Chris :)

It is wrong to think of “X days and X nights” as referring to a literal X * 24 hours. Other examples from the Bible show this.

But you’re correct it doesn’t say the day he died, though Friday does seem to make the most sense.

Hi Christopher,

Happy Easter greetings and welcome to the forums. Here’s a link to a gotquestions.org article that might be helpful :

On what day was Jesus crucified ?

Cheers, Kevin

Might be a cool discuaaion, but right now, here’s a subject;
Christ is risen.
He is risen indeed.

If you read this Wikipedia article on Easter you will see that, following the example of John the Apostle, the early church in Asia Minor celebrated Christ’s crucifixion on 14 Nisan, which is the day during which the Israelites sacrificed their passover lambs.  This meant that the day of Christ’s resurrection would not necessarily fall on a Sunday every year.  I think it’s reasonable to assume that it did occur on a Sunday because that became the Lord’s Day and replaced Saturday observance of the Sabbath.

Then the Western church sought to de-Judaise Christianity and, I guess, to make sure that Easter Sunday was always on a Sunday and that everyone would celebrate it on the same Sunday.  That doesn’t appear to have worked.

As for Good Friday (or Wednesday, or Thursday), I made a study of this a couple of years ago and my main impression is that it is extraordinarily difficult for people who think of days beginning and ending at midnight to get to grips with days that begin and end at sunset (or thereabouts).  For instance, here, in an article about Jewish calender rules, it is said that,

If the postponed date falls on a Sunday, Wednesday, or Friday it is postponed two days.

We think of “Sunday” as the first day of the week but Jewish people would think of the first day of the week starting at what we would think of as Saturday night.  So, talking about a postponed date that falls on a Sunday, does that mean the day beginning on Saturday night or the one beginning on Sunday night?  It’s very confusing.

You can find a heap of sites that discuss the issue of which day of the week it was that Christ died and there are a few sites that offer calendar calculators or that state the results of calculations that were done to determine the year of Christ’s death.  The best I can say is that there’s no consensus beyond the notion that it happened sometime between AD 30 and 33.

But having said that I will say that I definitely don’t think it happened on a Friday.  And I definitely don’t believe that the bread that Jesus broke at the Last Supper was unleavened bread. 

If Jesus entered Jerusalem on a colt, the foal of an ass, on a Sunday and if that was the day (10th Nisan) that the unblemished sacrificial lamb was selected, then the 14th of Nisan must have been a Thursday (assuming that He entered Jerusalem during daylight hours).  Then He would have been a bit less than 2 1/2 days in the tomb before His resurrection was recognised, while it was still dark, on the Sunday morning - the day that the First Fruits offering would have been made in the temple (according to the Sadducees). 

A Wednesday crucifixion date allows three whole days and nights in the tomb before First Fruits but it also means Jesus may have travelled more than a Sabbath day’s journey on the 10th Nisan.  Given that He was doing God’s work and was not averse to breaking humanly defined Sabbath rules when they conflicted with the real purpose of the Sabbath then He may have done just that.

That was interesting Janice!