How Long Was Christ Dead?

"He rose again on the third day according to the Scriptures..." (1 Corinthians 15:4) Our belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ is strengthened by the fact that it was predicted many centuries before the prophets, as well as by Christ Himself before His death. Show me anyone who can make such a prophecy beforehand and then fulfill it, and I will believe all other claims he may make and follow him to the death.

The Lord referred to Himself when He said, "For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the fish's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth" (Matthew 12:40). This expression, "three days and three nights," brings up a problem of chronology. How could the Lord Jesus have said that He would remain in the grave "three days and three nights," when He actually spent only a fraction of three days and only part of two nights in the grave? Some people think the difficulty can be solved by setting Wednesday or Thursday as the day of crucifixion, instead of Friday, but this radical solution isn't necessary at all and only creates other problems with the chronology of Holy Week. This point may seem of minor consequence, but its implications can become a serious concern. The truthfulness and verifiability of our Lord's word hinge upon it.

I remember once that I was not able to lead a young man to place his faith in Christ until I had straightened out this point of Bible chronology for him. For that reason I am going into the matter in some detail here. The question as to how long Jesus remained in the tomb would likely never have arisen had not some modern readers misunderstood the common ancient method of counting time called "inclusive reckoning." By this method, any fraction of a day or year at the beginning or end of a given period was included as a whole day or year. A classic Biblical example of this is found in 2 Kings 18:9,10 in which a war was dated as beginning and ending during certain years of the reign of Hezekiah, King of Judah, and Hosea, King of Israel.

These verses say that the war began in the 4th year of Hezekiah's reign and the 7th year of Hosea's, and ended in the 6th year of Hezekiah and the 9th year of Hosea. How long would you reckon that this war lasted? You would simply subtract four from six, or seven from nine and say that the war lasted two years. The Bible, however, describes the closing date of this war as "at the end of three years." The writer evidently counted the 4th to the 6th year of Hezekiah's reign as "four, five, six," and the 7th to the 9th of Hosea's as "seven, eight, nine" -- three years inclusively. (Remember, these kings ruled simultaneously, but over two different kingdoms.

) The modern western method of reckoning a person's age is to say that a child is not one year old until he has lived twelve months from the date of his birth, and he remains one year old all through his second year until his next birthday, when he becomes two. This was not the Biblical method of reckoning. In Genesis 7:6,11, we find that Noah was considered 600 years old in the 600th year of his life, while according to our reckoning he was still only 599. Japanese people up until recently called a child one year old on January first who had been born at any time during the preceding twelve months. Thus even a baby born in December was called a year old on January first.

The Chinese still follow this method. Getting back to the question of what Christ meant by the three days that He prophesied, the Bible lists several periods of "three days" that ended during, not at the close of, the third day, and thus covered less than 72 hours: "And Joseph put his brothers in custody for three days. On the third day, Joseph said to them...

" and released his brothers. See Genesis 42:17-19. When Israel asked King Rehoboam to lighten their burdens, he said: “Go away for three days and then come back to me.” The context subsequently says that they returned "on the third day” (1 Kings 12:5,12; also 2 Chronicles 10:5,12.) This method of inclusive reckoning was common in ancient Egypt and Semitic countries and is still found in the Far East today.

But we are not left with a mere obvious deduction as to what Jesus meant and understood by "third day." We have evidence from His own lips that He did indeed reckon time according to inclusive reckoning. In speaking of Herod on one occasion, He said, "Go tell that fox, 'I will drive out demons and heal people today and tomorrow, and the third day I will reach my goal.' In any case I must keep going today and tomorrow and the day following -- for surely no prophet can die outside of Jerusalem" (Luke 13:32,33). Jesus equated the third day with the day after tomorrow, the third day counted inclusively.

But what about Jesus' statement that He would be in the tomb 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" (Matthew 12:40). The usual formula that our Lord used in speaking of His resurrection was that "He should rise on the third day." This is the formula we find twelve times in the gospels: Matthew 16:21; 17:23; 20:19; Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:34; Luke 9:22; 13:32; 18:33; 24:7,46; John 2:19. The expression "three days and three nights" was used only by Jesus in Matthew 12:40. Since Jesus was using Jonah as an example of His resurrection, the phrase "three days and three nights" was meant to tie in with the Scripture from the book of Jonah:  "But the LORD provided a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was inside the fish three days and three nights" (Jonah 1:17).

Doesn't this mean that Jesus had to be in the tomb for three nights? It would appear that way to English readers. But the Hebrew expression for three days and three nights was also used generally and indefinitely for three days simply. It was a Jewish idiom for any part of three days. How do we know this? Idiom = An expression or combination of words in a given language that has a meaning that is different from the meanings of the individual words themselves. For example, an American English idiom would be "Hit the road," which doesn't mean that we want the individual to literally punch the pavement, but rather means we want them to leave.

Americans have many such idioms (one book lists over 2,000). Many American idioms are related to time. For example, "yesterday" usually means "the day before the present day," but it can also mean "a short while ago." "One of these days" means "soon, before long." Other time idioms are "save the day," "the other day," "break of day," "seize the day," "never see the light of day," "opening night," "last night," "the other night," "lock the door for the night," "in the middle of the night," "yesterday evening," etc.

According to the rabbis who lived near Jerusalem "night and day" was an idiom for any part of a 24 hour day. In the Jerusalem Talmud (a collection of writings by the rabbis living near Jerusalem), it is written "that a day and a night together make up an ōnah (nuchtheemeron in Greek), meaning "night" and "day", and that any part of such a period is counted as a whole." (See The Greek Testament, by Henry Alford, D.D., Vol.

I, Chicago: Moody Press, p. 133 or Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch, by Strack and Billerbeck, 1:649.) Matthew is a gospel written to Jews who would have understood this idiom. It is interesting that Luke (who wrote to Gentiles, not Jews) does not record this part of Jesus' speech - probably to avoid confusion to Gentile readers who would see a conflict with the length of time Jesus was actually in the tomb. See Luke 11:30.

We have exactly the same situation in Esther. When Esther was willing to risk entering the king’s throne room, she requested her fellow Jews to neither “eat nor drink for three days, night or day. I and my maids will fast as you do. When this is done, I will go to the king” (Esther 4:16). So when did Esther go to the king? Esther 5:1 says: "On the third day Esther put on her royal robes and stood in the inner court of the palace, in front of the king's hall.

" Not on the fourth day, but on the third day. If the Jewish people counted inclusively and "day and night" was an idiom for any part of a 24 hour day, why do we feel that we have to interpret Jesus' words according to the Western method of reckoning, allowing 24 full hours to a day? Jesus was speaking to people who thoroughly understood that any part of a 24 hour day was counted as a unit in reckoning time? By common usage His hearers would count the three days inclusively as Day 1, the day of crucifixion (Friday); Day 2, the day after that event (Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath); and Day 3, the third day after (or Sunday), though by modern count this would be the second day after. We cannot insist that, because Jesus said that He would rise after three days (Mark 8:31), He therefore meant, in modern fashion, after the end of the third full day, or 72 hours, for that would be equivalent to "on the fourth day," in Jewish usage used at that time. This is in exact agreement with the request by the religious leaders to Pilate: “This deceiver said while he was yet alive, 'After three days I will rise again.' Command therefore, that the sepulcher be made sure until the third day" (Mt.

27:63-64). If Jesus had died on Thursday instead of Friday, Pilate would have secured the tomb until the fourth day, not the third. This is also in exact accord with Luke's statement that the women left the embalming unfinished on the day of preparation as the Sabbath drew on, and rested the Sabbath day according to the commandment before returning on the first day of the week. If Christ had been crucified on Wednesday or Thursday, the women would hardly have waited several days to return. To understand the way of salvation and how to live the Christian life, we can rely on our English translations of the Bible as being fully comprehensible and sufficient.

But to understand many disputed points, it is necessary to examine the historical background and the original Hebrew or Greek of the Bible to determine just what was in the minds of the various authors, as they wrote under divine inspiration. To try to understand some of these disputed points by using our modern Western culture, language, and customs as a point of reference is to confuse rather than to clarify the issue.