Passover Lamb and question of three days

EASTER

By ALPHONSE BARIASI
WAS He crucified on Wednesday or Friday morning?
A subsequent query might be whether that is purely academic or a critical matter of faith.
Except for the serious scholar, I see that any Tom, Dick and Harry, in the main, could react to the opening question from a gut feeling based on what he has heard or on his best reading of scripture.
So here’s a likelyscenario: “Tom” brushes aside the question as immaterial to the grand salvation plan, “Dick” insists that historical truth makes faith in a risen Messiah more compelling, and “Harry”, well, he just couldn’t care less.
For now, we’ll stick to Harry’s lane to present the other viewpoints in neutral manner.

Three days and three nights
Christendom has, from its foundation, enshrined Good Friday as the day of the crucifixion.
Yeshua – Jesus – himself foretold that he would be in the company of the dead three days. (For as Jonah was in the belly of the great fish for three days and three nights, so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights. – Matt 12:40, NLT)
A day in Jewish reckoning is sunset to next sunset. So Friday sunset to Sunday (Resurrection) morning) is merely a day and a bit – not three days and three nights as he would and should have been in the tomb like Jonah in the giant grouper’s belly. (Grouper’s made up, sorry.)
So if Yeshua was crucified at the third hour on that Friday – 9am – and taken down from the cross to be laid in the tomb at around 6pm only to rise up on Sunday morning he would have hardly been in there three days and three nights.

Passover Lamb
The immediate forerunner to the Messiah, Yochannan – John – the Baptiser – pointed his followers to Yeshua as the Passover Lamb. “Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! – John 1:29).
Look what the Christian and Jew have done to the declared Lamb of God. The Christian underplays his Jewishness and the fact that he was a Rabbi – a radical one at that – who had little sympathy toward any legalistic keeping of the Torah. The Jew, meanwhile, takes him as one of the prophets, not the Promised Messiah.
Someone else woud deduce from the biblical narrative in Exodus 12 and the gospel accounts as descriptions of the same event, the latter following the manner of the former, only the sacrificial lamb and the location being different.
He was the human lamb examined for any blemish. He was ‘slaughtered’ and his blood was to atone for man’s sin. He was the unleavened bread baked in a hurry. He was pierced and placed in the earth (‘an oven’) like the Jewish matzah, and no bone of his was broken.
Hereon, we’ll continue the discourse on the day of crucifixion by borrowing from a couple of inline sources. The website www.makinglifecount.net states the following: “Christians have celebrated “Good Friday” as the traditional day Jesus died. But He could not have stayed in the grave three days and three nights if He died on Friday and was raised on Sunday.
“Some scholars teach that partial days are counted as a day (which would account for the three days) but this would allow for only two nights. He had to be crucified on Wednesday not Friday.
“The tradition of a Friday crucifixion comes from John 19:31 which says, “The Jews therefore, because it was the day of preparation, so that the bodies should not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away.” This was a special Sabbath on Thursday because of the Passover, not the weekly Sabbath on Saturday.
“The Jews counted 12 hours in a day. Jesus said, “Are there not 12 hours in the day?” (John 11:9).
“Jesus was crucified on Wednesday 3pm and placed in tomb just before 6pm.
“Jesus was resurrected before dawn on Sunday “after three days” (Mark 8:31). Mary Magdalene came to the tomb on early Sunday, while it was still dark and He was already resurrected (John 20:1). Jesus had been in the tomb three full days and nights.

Three possibilites
Gotquestions.org offers three possibilities: Jesus was crucified on what we would call a Friday, on a Thursday, or on a Wednesday.
1. Jesus crucified on Friday
Early Friday: Jesus eats the Passover.
Late Friday: Jesus is crucified and buried. Early and late Saturday (the Sabbath): Jesus is in the tomb.
Early Sunday: Jesus rises from the dead, and the women find the empty tomb.
“The traditional view is that Jesus was crucified on a Friday. According to this timeline, Jesus was killed in AD 30, and the day of preparation was Passover, Friday, Nisan 14. That was the time to eat the Passover meal and to ready dwellings for the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which began the next day, Saturday, Nisan 15.
“Mark 15:42 says that Jesus was crucified on “the day before the Sabbath”; proponents of the Friday view consider the “Sabbath” here to be the weekly observance held on Saturday.
“Immediately after Jesus was taken down from the cross, the women present followed the body of Jesus to the tomb to see where it was laid.
“The Friday view has Jesus in the tomb for three days by reckoning part of a day as a full day: Jesus was buried late in the day Friday (Day 1) and was entombed Saturday (Day 2) and the first part of Sunday (Day 3).
“According to the Friday view, the “three days and three nights” prophecy of Matthew 12:40 was fulfilled in that both Jesus and Jonah were “confined” in difficult situations where they could not move about freely for three periods of darkness (night) and three periods of light (day). The three nights of confinement for Jesus were His arrest on Thursday night and His time in the tomb Friday night and Saturday night (or, as reckoned in the Jewish method—in which a day begins at sunset—early Friday, early Saturday, and early Sunday).

2. Jesus crucified on Thursday
Late Thursday: Jesus is crucified and buried. Late Thursday through early Sunday: Jesus is in the tomb. Early Sunday: Jesus rises from the dead, and the women find the empty tomb.
“One point to be made in favour of the Thursday view is that Jesus’ prophecy of the sign of Jonah specifically includes three nights as well as three days . If the crucifixion occurred on Thursday afternoon, the three days and three nights are all accounted for.
“As for Luke’s statement that Jesus was taken down from the cross because “the Sabbath was about to begin” (Luke 23:54), the Thursday view points out that there were actually two Sabbaths that week, the first Sabbath starting at sundown Thursday, followed by the regular Sabbath starting at sundown Friday.
In fact, John’s account says that “the next day was to be a special Sabbath” (John 19:31); Passover was considered a special Sabbath.
“Thursday advocates also point to several passages that indicate the number of days between the crucifixion and the resurrection. For example, in John 2:19, Jesus says, ‘Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.’ Three days from Thursday is Sunday.
“In addition, when Jesus appears to the two men on the road to Emmaus on resurrection Sunday, they state that “it is the third day since all this took place” (Luke 24:21). A natural reading of this sentence would place the crucifixion on Thursday.
“Advocates for a Thursday crucifixion consider the “Preparation Day” to be the day before the Passover, the High Sabbath (John 19:14). Preparation day was the day that the Passover lamb was killed prior to the Passover meal that evening—which, according to Jewish reckoning, was the beginning of the next day (Mark 14:12).
“Based on this timeline, Thursday proponents also argue that the Last Supper, eaten on Wednesday evening, was not the Passover meal. The main course at Passover was a lamb, and there is no lamb mentioned at the Last Supper. Only bread and wine are mentioned.

3. Jesus crucified on Wednesday
Late Wednesday: Jesus is crucified and buried. Early Thursday (Passover) through Late Saturday (Sabbath): Jesus is in the tomb. Friday (between the two Sabbaths): the women buy and prepare the spices. Early Sunday: Jesus rises from the dead, and the women find the empty tomb.
“Those who argue for a Wednesday crucifixion agree with the Thursday view that there were two Sabbaths that week, but they separate them by a day. The first Sabbath, in this view, was the Passover Sabbath starting Wednesday evening following the crucifixion (Mark 15:42; Luke 23:52–54). Then came a non-Sabbath day (Friday) and then the weekly Sabbath starting Friday evening.
“The women purchased spices after the Sabbath, according to Mark 16:1—meaning the Passover Sabbath. Luke 23:56 says that, after the women saw where Jesus was buried, ‘they went home and prepared spices and perfumes. But they rested on the Sabbath in obedience to the commandment.’
“The Wednesday argument states that the women could not purchase the spices after the Sabbath and prepare those spices before the Sabbath unless there were two Sabbaths that week, separated by a day.
“Supporters of the Wednesday viewpoint see theirs as the only explanation that does not violate the biblical account of the women and the spices and holds to a literal understanding of Matthew 12:40.”

Conclusion
Gotquestions.org concludes that “while the day of the crucifixion is debated, the day of the resurrection is absolutely clear: Scripture says that Jesus rose on the first day of the week.
“What’s more important than knowing the day of the week of Jesus’ death is believing that He did die and that He rose from the dead.”
In other words, truth matters here but is not to take up spear and shield for. We mark a monarch’s ‘birthday’ with a public holiday knowing well that is not actually when they were born, right?