How is it 3 days if Jesus died Friday and rose Sunday?

Introduction

A lot of modern readers will read the account of Christ in the Gospels and come away confused about His death and resurrection. Jesus says He will be in the tomb for three days, and yet He is in the tomb, at most, like 1 and 1/3rd of a day. Friday afternoon, to Saturday, to Sunday morning. How on earth could that possibly be counted as “three days”? Surely, if He were to be in the tomb for 3 days, He would be there until Monday afternoon, right?

This is a common objection to the narrative of Christ’s death and resurrection and has been used for centuries to try and discredit the Gospel accounts. Mostly used by slop-apologetic accounts online, and not by any real scholar, this argument can nonetheless be persuasive if you don’t know the facts of the matter.

The answer here lies in understanding the way first-century Jews reckoned time, and not trying to back-fill the Gospel accounts with your 21st century, Western method of counting days into the accounts provided by the Four Evangelists.

This article will cover the inclusive way that first-century Jews counted days, it will reference you back to the words Jesus actually said, it will confirm its reasoning in the confessional Lutheran witness and patristic sources.

By the end of this article you should be able to faithfully defend the Biblical fact that Christ was Crucified on a Friday Afternoon, and rose again on a Sunday Morning, and that is, in fact, three days.

The Jewish Reckoning of Time

When it came to reckoning time, the Ancient Jews (and, consequently, modern Jews) consider a part of a day to be a whole day. Essentially, if part of the day was consumed with a task, then that whole day was considered devoted to that task, even if it only took a few hours or was an isolated incident.

We most clearly see this in rabbinic literature. Specifically, if we look a the Jerusalem Talmud, Shabbat 9:3 we can see a record of a dispute about this exact matter when it comes to ritual uncleanness. The Tannaim are arguing over how long a woman is unclean after coming into contact with semen.

Look, I get it, this is a totally sus thing to be arguing about…

But it really is important here! It’s important because these Rabbi are arguing about the Jewish idea of an Onah, or part of a day, and how much of an onah has to pass before a full day can be considered to have passed. It gives us a very interesting view into the first century Jewish reckoning of time. In this discourse the Rabbis determine that a day consists of two onah: The Morning and The Evening. They further conclude, through consensus, that a part of an onah is a full day in the Jewish reckoning.

Their initial argument is about a woman who has relations with her husband Friday morning, and how she can - technically - be considered ritually clean by Saturday evening, a day and a half later. But if she were to have relations Friday evening or later, it could be another four or five days until she could be considered ritually clean.

This all involves a bit of weird math, not gonna lie, but the long and short of it is this: A day is divided into two parts, and if you do something for the majority of one of those parts, you’ve done it for the whole day.

This is super important because it helps us understand how Jewish teachers of Jesus’ day taught about how time was considered. They didn’t consider 24 hours to be a day. Rather they considered the day made up of two parts: The Morning and The Evening. And if you did something for part of either one of those demarcations, you did it for the day.

This is the way Jesus’ disciples were considering days, and the way that most Jews (and probably Romans) would have considered days.

So under this convention, this inclusive reckoning of time, Jesus was in the grave for 3 days because he was in the grave on Friday before sundown (which counts Friday as a day), all day Saturday (second day), and from Saturday evening to Sunday morning (which would count Sunday as the third day).

And we see this kind of counting throughout the Scripture as well! In Esther we see the following account:

Then Esther sent this reply to Mordecai: “Go and assemble all the Jews who can be found in Susa, and fast for me. Do not eat or drink for three days, night or day, and I and my maidens will fast as you do. After that, I will go to the king, even though it is against the law. And if I perish, I perish!” On the third day, Esther put on her royal robes and stood in the inner court of the palace across from the king’s quarters. The king was sitting on his royal throne in the royal courtroom, facing the entrance.

Esther 4:15-5:1

Esther says, “Have all Israel fast for three days and then after that I will go to the King.” And then she goes to the king on the third day. According to a modern Western counting of days, she would need to wait until the fourth day to fill up “three days” with fasting. But this is not what happens.

Likewise we see this account of Joseph and his brothers from Genesis 42:

So Joseph imprisoned them for three days, and on the third day he said to them, “I fear God. So do this and you will live: 19If you are honest, leave one of your brothers in custody while the rest of you go and take back grain to relieve the hunger of your households. 20Then bring your youngest brother to me so that your words can be verified, that you may not die.”

Genesis 42:17-18

We see the same thing here. Joseph imprisons his brothers for three days, and then comes to them on the third day. But, again, if you thinking like a modern westerner, he should have come to them on the fourth day, or they wouldn’t have been imprisoned for three days. But Joseph comes to them on the third day and releases them, and yet they are still considered to have been imprisoned for three days.

What Did Jesus Say?

Let’s turn to the words of Jesus, because they also provide some much needed context and clarification.

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 “three days and three nights” bit is actually pretty important here and does a bit of heavy lifting. The phrase itself is a Hebraism that is refenced throughout the Scriptures (such as 1 Samuel 30:12) and is an inclusive period, and not a literal 72-hour count.

And for what its worth: Yes, Jonah is also using this reckoning and was not in a fish for literally 72 hours.

Click here to watch my 3-part interview with Rev. Dr. Jason Gudim on Jonah on YouTube!

Let’s look at a few more verses and see what Jesus says:

From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.

Matthew 16:21

When they came together in Galilee, he said to them, “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men. They will kill him, and on the third day he will be raised to life.” And the disciples were filled with grief.

Matthew 17:22-23

Now Jesus was going up to Jerusalem. On the way, he took the Twelve aside and said to them, “We are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified. On the third day he will be raised to life!”

Matthew 20:17-19

What’s really interesting is that in all these instances, Jesus says He will be raised to life on the third day. But when the Chief Priests and Pharisees go to Pilate to petition guards for Christ’s tomb, they recount His words as such:

“Sir,” they said, “we remember that while he was still alive that deceiver said, ‘After three days I will rise again.’

Matthew 27:63

I bring this up because, to the Jews, even according to the Scriptures, “after three days” clearly included the possibility of Jesus being raised on the third day. To believe otherwise, that they were misrepresenting Jesus’ words for some reason, is to believe that they wanted to post guards outside His tomb on the day after He said He would rise for some reason?

Other texts we have to show that after three days = on the third day are Luke 24:21, the disciples on the road to Emmaus say to Jesus, “Today is the third day since these things happened.” So they were speaking to Jesus the Sunday afternoon after He was crucified.

Similarly St. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 15:4 that Jesus “was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.”

Patristic and Historical Witness

We see that the church, from the very beginning, celebrated Christ’s resurrection on a Sunday, as it attested by the Scriptures (Acts 20:7; Revelation 1:10).

Likewise, the patristic tradition universally identifies Friday as the date of the crucifixion with that Sunday being the date of the resurrection. You cannot find any record in the fathers of anyone proposing differing crucifixion dates or attempting to adhere to a literal 72-hour interpretation of 3 days. The Fathers understood that “three days and three nights” was an idiomatic phrase, and that Jews of the time counted partial days as full days.

Augustine, for example, in Letter 55 to Januarius, calls Triduum “the three memorable days (His passion, His day in the grave, and His resurrection)” (Augustine, Letter 55, 14:26).

The Lutheran Confessions

The Lutheran Confessions also maintain an inclusive reckoning of the three days and three nights. Primarily, the Apostle’s Creed maintains “on the third day He rose from the dead.”

In his sermon on the second article of the creed, Luther affirms that the resurrection happened on the third day, which shows that even in his day the saying “after three days” was known to be idiomatic and not a reference to a literal 72-hour period.

Likewise, Article III of the Augsburg makes the same assumption about the three days Christ spent in the grave.

Conclusion

In short: Friday to Sunday is three days according to Jewish inclusive reckoning of time. In this view, if something happens during part of a day, it is rightly said to have happened that day, and is counted towards the whole day.

Likewise, “three days and three nights” is shown to be a fairly common Hebraism, an idiomatic phrase that doesn’t necessitate a literal 72-hour period. It can be further seen from Scripture that “After three days,” “On the third day,” and “three days and three nights” are all used fairly interchangeably with the meaning being understood to be the same.

The Resurrection of Christ on Sunday, along with His three days in the tomb are both affirmed by the Lutheran Confessions, the Church Fathers, and the Scriptures. Christ’s three days in the tomb was a fulfilment of biblical prophecy that we confess together as Christians throughout the ages.

Far from any kind of contradiction, Christ’s death, three days in the grave, and resurrection is a widely attested historical fact and is, in no way, a contradiction in the scriptures or real difficulty for a Christian to contend with seriously.