I believe every Christian desires to know Jesus Christ (Yeshua ha Moshiach, i.e., our Promised Salvation/Deliverance/Freedom) to the fullest extent possible. I also believe that this desire has been thwarted, not by the teachings of outlier sects or cults that may have brought some confusion to the minds of believers; rather, by the teachings of mainline denominations and their offshoots, all of whose basic theological tenets are fairly uniform. This is not to minimize the importance of the proper interpretation of Scripture pertaining to reformed vs baptistic doctrines or Arminian vs Calvinist theological confessional platforms or type of congregational governance, be it episcopal, congregational, or presbyterian. My concern is that the historical Christian faith as enunciated in the New Testament and foretold in the Old Testament, was compromised early on by Rome and, despite the Reformation, has been propagated within the evangelical Christian community—minus those egregious tenets of Roman Catholicism which the Reformation protested—throughout the centuries up to the present day. It is high time that the evangelical Christian community stop being led by the nose by a millennia-old diktat established by Rome.

This article, therefore, is also a protest – in the form of a polemic – based on the premise that an inaccurate exegesis of the details surrounding the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus based on a biased interpretation of the relevant Biblical texts has hindered us from fully comprehending: the exact meaning of the Apostle Paul’s declaration that we have been freed from the law of sin and death; and the importance of inculcating the reality of that declaration in our lives. It is essential that we as God’s people realize that we have been reborn spiritually thanks to the literal physical work that Jesus accomplished, not only on the cross but also through His resurrection.

The purpose of this article, then, is to examine the implications of the awesome power that Jesus displayed, both living and dying, which was so consequential spiritually to all who have been called, in that it effected our regeneration, justification by faith, sanctification, and future glorification, and the resultant freedom to live out that salvation.

There were three events that transpired during the week of Passover that I took for granted as to their connection to the overall timeline in the sequence of the pertinent activities that resulted in the fulfillment of the 3-day, 72-hour time span from Jesus’s burial to resurrection. Also, thinking that by illustrating that the internal evidence speaks for itself in favor of a literal interpretation of “three days and three nights,” I neglected to address the manner in which this time element was expressed. I also failed to synchronize John’s account of the week with the accounts given by Matthew, Mark, and Luke to round out the picture that they were all on the same page.

So, this updated version of the article, which was first published on January 21, 2022, is meant to accomplish several things. First, to give an introductory raison d’etre for the article (hopefully accomplished above); second, to put into perspective three peripheral events in relation to the central story, which are: 1) The Last Supper, 2) the stone is sealed and a guard placed in front of the tomb, and 3) the appearance of Jesus to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus; and third, to examine the dative of time grammar point. The second and third issues will be inserted within the original text, which begins with the next paragraph. One final note: please do not ignore the footnotes; they are an integral part of this paper.

In all cases concerning our faith and living out that faith practically, Scripture must be our guide, to the exclusion of extra-Biblical material or tradition. One issue that has become central to the Christian faith is attending church on Sunday, which a great many professing Christians believe makes a Christian, i.e., by doing so they have fulfilled their weekly obligation, primarily because of the Church’s teaching that Sunday is the new, legally binding Sabbath. Therefore, it is exactly this teaching– that Sunday is “the Lord’s Day,” meaning that Sunday was the day on which Jesus rose from the dead–that needs to be examined to correctly understand the implications of such an interpretation of Scripture. Since it has been stipulated that this examination must rely exclusively on Scripture, the Scripture-centric method for doing so is to establish a timetable of events surrounding Jesus’s death, burial, and resurrection, starting with what Jesus Himself said. [Warning: It will be necessary to dispense with preconceptions and put aside tradition, while acknowledging that the canonical Scriptures are the totally true and inerrant Word of God, and, as mentioned above, the only guide for faith and practice.]

So, let’s start with Jesus’s response to the scribes and Pharisees who were demanding a sign from Him. The only sign, He said, would be that just as Jonah the prophet was in the belly of the great fish three days and three nights, so [He] (literally, the Son of Man) would be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights (Matthew 12:38-41).

Secondly, it is important to arrange logistically the sequence of events during the week of Passover: 1) Passover occurs on 14 Nisan; 2) a special Sabbath takes place the day after Passover; and 3) the habitual—in this case, a second—Sabbath is observed on Saturday.[1] Working backward from the Scriptural account of the women going to the tomb early on the first day of the week (Sunday) as the day began to dawn leads to a resolution not only of the day on which Jesus was crucified and buried but also when He arose. In the account, we are told that upon arriving at the tomb, the women find that the stone sealing the grave had been rolled away; whereupon an angel informs them that Jesus had already risen.[2]

Now, we must go back to the account of the Messiah’s crucifixion and subsequent burial. We are told that He had to be buried before sundown because the Sabbath was approaching. But, John explains, this wasn’t the ordinary Sabbath; this Sabbath was a ‘high day’ (ην μεγαλη η ημερα εκεινου του σαββατου; John 19:31). In fact, John is even more specific that the next day would be a Sabbath by noting that the day of Passover was also the Day of Preparation [παρασκευη], which, according to Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, was “the day on which the Jews made the necessary preparations to celebrate a sabbath or a feast”—therefore, the increased urgency on the part of the Jewish leaders to hasten the death of Jesus (as well as of the two criminals who had been executed with Him) so they could be removed before the start of the Sabbath at sundown. Again, in verse 42, John reiterates that because it was “the Day of Preparation of the Jews,” followers of Jesus, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, hurried to bury Jesus.[3]

Let’s return to the women at the tomb. They indeed had come on Sunday, “the first day of the week,” meaning that another Sabbath, the one normally observed on Saturday, along with the accompanying day of preparation on Friday, had hindered them from tending to their Master’s body any sooner. Upon their arrival at the tomb in the pre-dawn on Sunday, an angel told them that Jesus had already risen, but why therefore assume that He had only just risen?

So, now, we ask ourselves, if Jesus had already risen by early Sunday morning if we work backward from that definite point in time, when must Jesus have been buried to equal a 72-hour time frame in fulfillment of the ‘sign of Jonah’? The obvious answer is, that He was lain in the tomb on Wednesday late afternoon before sunset, meaning that the 72 hours ended on Saturday afternoon before sunset, i.e., while it was still the sabbath!

To tie up this timeline: On Tuesday evening, Jesus has His Last Supper with the Twelve and is later betrayed by one of them, Judas Iscariot; late Tuesday into early Wednesday, He is brought before Pilate and sentenced to death by crucifixion; before noon on Wednesday, He is crucified and Wednesday[4] prior to sunset is taken down from the cross and buried. Wednesday is also Passover as well as the Day of Preparation for the “High Sabbath” on Thursday; and Friday, the day of preparation for the normally observed Saturday sabbath. Here we have the 3-day period of Jesus being in the ‘heart of the earth:’ Day 1 – dusk* Wednesday to dusk Thursday; Day 2 – dusk Thursday to dusk Friday; Day 3 – dusk Friday to dusk Saturday (*by ‘dusk’ I mean just prior to sunset). Just to be clear, Matthew, Mark, and Luke all follow the same timeline – there are no discrepancies. All three make clear that the day of the Passover, Wednesday, was also the Day of Preparation for the [extra] sabbath the following day, which John calls a ‘high sabbath.’ In other words, from the time of Jesus’s burial until the discovery of the empty tomb, there was a “break in the action,” during which both the high sabbath and the habitual sabbath had been observed. In my opinion, it is inexcusable to question a timeline that demonstrates that the Lamb of God was slain on the very day as the Passover lambs were, and then buried (thus signifying and confirming His death) within the same time frame that the Paschal lambs were slain (cf. Ex. 12:6 – the Hebrew is very specific; the lamb was to be slain “between the two evenings,” i.e., the time between the declining and the setting of the sun.)

The three peripheral events in relation to the central story:

1) The Last Supper: Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell us that it was the First Day of Unleavened Bread when the Pascha was to be eaten; that two of the disciples, whom Luke identifies as Peter and John, at Jesus’s behest, went to make the arrangements; and, that it was night (οψιας) when Jesus, together with the Twelve, went to the place where they were to eat. John, on the other hand, tells us that it was before the feast (προ δε της εορτης του πασχα) that they had the meal in question. It is necessary to combine the three time elements to establish when Jesus and the Twelve went to the upper room to eat their last meal together before Jesus was crucified. By putting together in proper sequence the information shared by the Synoptics, i.e., that it was the first day of the feast when the Pascha was to be eaten, and that it was late, we arrive at the conclusion that it was after sundown on Tuesday, when technically the first day of the feast began. John clarifies that this was the case by telling us that they would be eating their meal before the actual feast, which would have been almost 24 hours later. This was Jesus’s farewell meal with those with whom He had spent three years and to whom He demonstrated true servanthood by washing their feet. At the same time, He intended to reveal that one of them would betray Him, in my opinion, to lessen the shock when it happened, thus initiating the countdown to His conviction and crucifixion less than twelve hours later.

2) The sealing of the stone and the placing of a guard in front of the tomb: This event, recorded only by Matthew, occurred “the next day, the one that is after the day of preparation (τη δε επαυριον, ητις εστιν μετα την παρασκευην),” i.e., the day after Passover or the ‘high day’ sabbath (Thursday – with the Passover having been celebrated the day before, on Wednesday). The chief priests and Pharisees went to Pilate to express their fear that Jesus’s disciples might come and take the body, then claim that He had risen. After all, they remind Pilate, [He] had said that “I will rise after three days.” These Jewish leaders obviously took Jesus’s words literally. Two reasons persist as to why Jesus’s burial could only have been Wednesday, not Friday: 1) the Synoptics and John consistently used the codename/ euphemism “day of preparation” to mean the day of Passover; and, 2) a Friday burial would have meant a Monday evening resurrection, if the phrase “three days” is taken literally, which, we have established, the Jewish leaders did. But the tomb was empty early Sunday morning, as witnessed by the women who had gone to minister to their Teacher’s body.

3) Jesus appears to the two disciples on their way to Emmaus: Luke, the only one of the four Gospel writers to record this event, writes that these two disciples, one of whom was named Cleopas, were on their way to Emmaus “on this very day,” from the preceding verses meaning that it was the first day of the week – within the context of the 3-day period in or after which Jesus was expected to rise – “since all these things happened.” It was also getting late.

All the translations that I checked have Cleopas affirming that “this [or “it”] is the third day since all these things happened.” Although a very nebulous, open-to-question statement as to what is meant by “all these things,” it is assumed that the starting point is the crucifixion. And what about “this is the third day” – has the third day not ended? But Cleopas and the other disciple readily admit that they had been expecting Jesus to keep His word that He would rise from the dead the third day. The crux of the matter, however, hangs not so much on the translation as on the meaning of the verb αγω in the context of the exchange between them and Jesus: “…και συν πασιν τουτοις τριτην ταυτην ημεραν αγει αφ’ ου ταυτα εγενετο.” The sentiment being expressed is, “He has already allowed three days to pass.”[5]

Now let’s look at the time expression that is used consistently by the Synoptics – τη τριτη ημερα (with iota subscript). According to Moulton’s grammar, “normally, the dative alone (or with εν) indicates a specific day/night.” That is, in this case, Jesus would rise from the dead “the third day.” The sentence reads fluently and, given the Greek construction, completely accurately. There is no need to insert the preposition ‘on,’ not that doing so should or would change the meaning; the time element merely indicates that at some point during that specific third day, Jesus would rise.

The fact is that all the internal evidence contained in the Scriptures points to a literal three days, the countdown of which can only be Wednesday “between the two evenings,” i.e., as the sun was descending but had not yet set. My plea is for the members of the body of Christ to throw off the yoke of tradition that was established more than one and a half millennia ago intentionally based on a false narrative by Rome, and to celebrate and live out the resurrection of our Savior as Scripture expects of us.

As we will see, the implications of such a timeline are far more reaching and—at least for me—staggering than the obvious ones that there is no efficacy whatsoever in the pageantry of Easter week with its attending dramas of the Thursday evening Tenebrae and the Good Friday reading of the last words of Jesus, culminating in Easter Sunday—many times at sunrise. As we have hopefully established, these events are the ramifications both of inaccurately reading the Biblical account of the crucifixion, burial, and resurrection; and, doing mathematical gymnastics to account for the 3-day period rather than accepting the fact that Jesus was speaking of a literal three days and three nights when referring to Jonah[6]. In my opinion, the Book of Jonah should, in fact, be read as part of the preparatory stage looking forward to the celebration of the Resurrection to experience the full impact of Jesus’ death as typified in Jonah’s descent into the abyss (שאול / Sheol) yet trusting that the LORD his GOD would raise him again to execute the salvation of the Lord. (Jonah 2:7.) The deep (no pun intended) meaning of the Book of Jonah, who indeed is a type of Christ, therefore accuses of sacrilege those who do not take the 72-hour/3-day reference literally. But the implications go still deeper (okay, pun intended) …

In Luke 6:5, Jesus answers the Pharisees’ accusation that He was not observing the Sabbath by declaring that [He] “is the LORD of the Sabbath,” a statement which Mark has Jesus introducing by saying that “the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27). In Luke 6:9, just before He heals the man with a withered right hand, Jesus poses the rhetorical question, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save a life or to destroy it?” Both Mark and Luke, throughout their respective gospels, record acts of Jesus healing on the Sabbath as proofs that Jesus indeed was not bound by the legalities imposed by the teachers of the law regarding the Sabbath; rather, by performing acts of healing on the Sabbath, He was illustrating His teaching that the Sabbath was made for man, so that man might experience healing and restoration, which ultimately comes from trusting, and then resting, in Him.

I would characterize one such act of healing by Jesus as an object lesson for a remarkable prophetic teaching point, recorded by Luke in chapter 13:10-17, in which verses we are told that Jesus healed “a woman having a spirit of sickness for eighteen years; she was bent completely forward and was utterly unable to straighten herself up.” To the incrimination by the synagogue official that He had performed this act of healing on the Sabbath, Jesus, in part, responded [in paraphrase] “…Should not this daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound for eighteen years, have been released from this bondage on the Sabbath day?” In broader application, Jesus rose to release from bondage those who had been bound by Satan, on the Sabbath!

Another point to consider is that Scripture tells us in no uncertain terms that Jesus fulfilled the Law in its entirety, which, I would suggest, includes the Ten Commandments with its injunction to keep the Sabbath day holy. As Paul says in chapter 10:4 of his letter to the Romans, “For Christ is the end (τελος; not ‘purpose’ as some say) of the Law for righteousness to everyone who believes.” Indeed, Jesus had instructed a certain scribe, who had inquired of Him concerning “which is the first commandment of all,” that “there is no greater commandment than this: Hear, Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Mark 12:29-31) Since the entirety of Scripture points to Jesus Christ (Ιησους Χριστος, Yeshua ha Moshiach, i.e., Jesus the Messiah) as that One Lord, it is to Him that the first command applies, and with Whose love the second command is applied, for as Paul implies in Romans 13:9 by using the Greek verb for God’s love, αγαπη, we can only love in this manner after having experienced God’s love in Christ for ourselves. Indeed, this “love fulfills the law.” The Ten Commandments, as part of the Law, fall within the parameters of this greater command and, therefore, there is no room for hanging one’s hat on the Sunday = the new Sabbath Sabbatarian hat rack. True, the early Christians met on the first day of the week for fellowship; this practice may be considered a precedent, but certainly, it is not prescriptive. Nowhere in the New Testament is the ‘first day of the week’ called the Sabbath nor is there an injunction to meet on the first day of the week.[7] Indeed, in the context of Christian liberty, Paul addresses in Romans 14:5+ and in Colossians 2:16, however ambiguously, the issue of whether to observe a given day or days in a determined, special manner, specifically mentioning Sabbaths, and concludes that whatever the decision, it is a matter of conscience.

Furthermore, Paul reminds the Galatian Christians, who, under the influence of false teaching, were regressing from faith in Christ alone and incorporating the Law, that in the fullness of time (i.e., at just the right time) God had sent forth His Son, born of woman, born under the Law, to redeem those under the Law, so that we might receive sonship. (Galatians 4:4-5). I have always assumed that Paul was referring to the historical circumstances at that time and, thanks to the Pax Romana, the peaceful conditions under which the inception and spread of the Good News in Christ as well as the establishment of the early Christian Community were made possible. Not to get bogged down in the historical minutia of that period, it was a time of relative peace, otherwise, there would not have been the insurrectionist Barabbas[8] or Simon/Judas, one of the Twelve, who was identified as ‘the Zealot.’[9]

There are interesting sidebars that could be examined concerning the tensions that existed between the Jews and the Romans during Jesus’s ministry, but that is not the purpose of this paper. However, most definitely within the context of this study is God’s economy of purpose, particularly in the lives of His people, meaning that His Holy Spirit is always working for the good together with them. In the case that I have placed before us here, on the one hand, we have the epitome of what has come to be known as an anarchist, whose only goal is the violent overthrow of the ruling authorities with no intention of establishing an alternative governing structure. Whether or not Barabbas was a Zealot,[10] but for the call of Jesus on Simon the Zealot’s life, Simon could very well have gone down the same path of radical politico-religious extremism as Barabbas.[11] Without a doubt, over the three years that Simon, i.e., Judas the Zealot, spent with Jesus, as he witnessed his Master’s teachings concerning, and healings on, the Sabbath, Simon’s attitudes toward the Mosaic Law must have been in a state of flux. Certainly, upon Jesus’s rising from the grave on the Sabbath, Simon finally was freed from the shackles of hatred and rebellion that had consumed him in his antipathy toward the Roman interlopers. Jesus indeed had fulfilled the Old Testament Law and replaced it with the law of love as it is experienced through believing in Him, the True Deliverer of Israel. This Jesus did ‘in the fullness of time,’ when the 3-day time frame would end on the Sabbath.

Sabbath observance—more so than the feasts, which are extremely useful in illustrating God’s plan of salvation through the Messiah[12]—is a point of contention that has become a line of demarcation dividing the Messianic (believing Jews) and the Christian (believing Gentiles) communities. This ought not to be; for just as Yeshua abrogated the Old Covenant Sabbath, so a new, ‘first-day-of-the-week’ Sabbath was not established. Only the discovery on the first day of the week that the tomb was empty set the precedent to meet then. This gathering time was not prescriptive; nor did a Biblical injunction to do so follow. Precedent led to convention which in turn led to tradition, the reasons for which appear to have been: for Christian worship to coincide with the pagan practice of worshipping the sun on Sunday and for Gentile and non-Judaizing Jewish Christians to separate themselves from the Judaizers. It seems to me, that based on the evidence, the Scriptural compromise is for corporate worship of all, whether believing in Jesus Christ or Yeshua ha Moshiach, to be held in the late afternoon on Saturday. There is neither Jew nor Greek….

What greater good work could Jesus accomplish with His death and resurrection than to release from the bondage of sin and death all those who place their faith in Him, Who Himself defeated Satan, the architect of sin and death, through His resurrection from the dead?! Jesus accomplished this on the Sabbath when He rose just before sunset. It is logical to conclude, therefore, that Jesus’s resurrection should be celebrated on Saturday evening just before sunset and not on Sunday. The inclusion of the account of the women going to the empty tomb in the pre-dawn hours of Sunday is meant to accentuate the fact that Jesus had risen, just as He said He would. It is entirely possible that when John, on the island of Patmos, noted that he was “in the Spirit on the Lord’s day,” (εν πνευματι εν τη κυριακη ημερα) he very well could have meant Saturday, not as the old Sabbath, but as the day when Christ rose from the grave!

My perspective, therefore, is that throughout His ministry, by healing on the Sabbath and even by walking through the grain fields with His disciples picking the heads off and eating them (without performing the ritual handwashing beforehand—understood implicitly as one of the reasons why He was accused of breaking the Sabbath) Jesus was illustrating that He was redefining AND transforming the Sabbath. It was no longer to be kept holy by keeping the instructions as to how that was to be done according to the Ten Commandments, to which the teachers of the law had added multitudinous regulations; rather, by reprimanding the Pharisees that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath, Jesus was teaching that the Sabbath had been God’s provision for man’s restoration under the Old Covenant. But now, with His resurrection, He had abrogated the Old Testament Sabbath with its legalities and turned it on its head by working on the Sabbath, thereby replacing it with Himself as being the real source of healing and restoration. In John 9:4, Jesus is recorded as declaring: “It is necessary for us to do the works of the One Who has sent Me while it is day. Night is coming when no one will be able to work. While being in the world, I am the light of the world.” Jesus continues to live and work in the world through the Holy Spirit, Whom He has given to those He has called. The work to be accomplished in the name of Jesus will be explored in my study on the derivation of the conceptual word ‘church.’

Of course, our work, first and foremost, is to believe in the One Whom God has sent. (John 6:28-29) But this work is not ours at all, but that of the Holy Spirit, Who, by convicting us of our sin, of the righteousness that can be found in Christ alone and of the judgment to come, regenerates our heart whereby we plead Christ’s righteousness by which we are justified [made right] in God the Father’s eyes. Even this ‘work’ was accomplished by Jesus’s good work, foreseen by Him on our behalf, when He rose on the Sabbath.

Our transformation ensues through the means of grace, the attending to which is work. It is essential that Christ’s own make every effort to gather for corporate worship, partake of the Lord’s Supper, engage in fellowship, read the Word, and pray. Through these agents, which He has provided and by which we accrue to ourselves God’s grace, we thus realize the outcome of Paul’s injunction in Romans 12:2 “…to not be conformed to this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of the mind for you to prove what the will of God [is], the good and pleasing and perfect.” This, of course, goes in tandem with the prior admonition to present [our] bodies [a] living [and] holy sacrifice, pleasing to God, [our] logical worship (λατρεια). As such, we are transformed by the mind of Christ, Who transformed all things through His resurrection.

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[1] See Leviticus 23:3-6 for the stipulations regarding the habitual, weekly Sabbath as well as the date when Passover is to be held and the follow-on Feast of Unleavened Bread, the first day of which is to be treated as a Sabbath.

[2] We have declared our examination is to be based on the internal evidence as presented in Scripture, meaning that we trust the Scriptural accounts surrounding Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection to be consistent and noncontradictory. In that case, how to handle the 16th chapter of Mark’s gospel? (Mark’s gospel has been said to be one packed with action, with one literary device for portraying action being the use of participles. I have not done a study comparing the use of participles among the writers of the four Gospels, so I cannot claim that Mark has used more of them in his gospel than Matthew, Luke or John did in theirs. As that may be, as an inflected language, Greek is prone to the use of participles in various declensional forms to describe a certain action verbally.) In Mark 16:2, the temporal participial phrase has proven challenging for translators, with many of them evidently falling back on preconceptions, which in turn have led to incorrect translations driven by faulty analysis. Here we have the account of the women coming to the tomb ανατειλαντος του ηλιου ~ ‘as the sun was rising’ or more literally ‘of the rising of the sun,’ which, by the way, is almost assuredly a Hebraism for כזרח השמש ‘as the sun rose’ found in Jonah 4:8. Any translation that in any way implies or states explicitly that the sun had (already) risen (such as the NASB) is based on bias or is the result of a failure to completely and accurately compare the other gospels’ accounts. Mark himself stresses that it was very (λιαν) early…

The translation issue of greater concern, however, is found in Mark 16:9, which begins an alternative ending to chapter 16 and as such, begs the question: Why do not all manuscripts agree on the authenticity of the passage or whether it should be recognized as a piece of the whole cloth of Mark’s final chapter? In my opinion, it reads as an executive summary would, drawing upon the most salient factors concerning Jesus’s resurrection and the immediate events that followed. However, even if there is some controversy surrounding these final verses, that perhaps they were not included in the original Gospel of Mark, but added at some later time, it must have been at the direction of the Holy Spirit and therefore they cannot be written off as not pertaining to its overall inspired content. This realization makes even more pressing an internal examination of verse 9 as well as a comparison with companion verses in the other gospels. Verse 9 reads, “Αναστας δε πρωι πρωτη σαββατου εφανη…” which almost all translations render, “Having risen early on the first day of the week, He appeared…”. Of the translations I checked, only the New English Bible (NEB) is completely honest with the syntax: “When [H]e had risen from the dead early on Sunday morning [H]e appeared first to Mary of Magdala…”, while Η Αγια Γραφη, the modern Greek version of the Bible, renders the Κοινη (NT Greek): Μετα την ανασταση του ο Ιησους, το πρωι της Κuριακης, εμφανιστηκε πρωτα στη Μαρια τη Μαγδαληνη…/ After [H]is resurrection Jesus, Sunday morning, appeared first to Mary Magdalene…” The correct translation required separating the time element from the participial action of ‘having risen’ and connecting it with the action of ‘appearing.’ Strictly speaking, the translation should read: “Having risen, He first appeared to Mary of Magdalene, from whom…., on Sunday morning.” I would suggest that the parenthetical/explanatory ‘Jesus’ in the modern Greek translation is inserted as a means of showing the break that ‘δε’ represents in the Κοινη. I would also suggest that the prepositional phrase explaining who Mary of Magdalene was, which requires punctuation to set it off, adds some difficulty to properly arrange the sentence in the correct sequence, especially if the translator feels it imperative to retain the original syntax, such as the NEB obviously did.

Let’s put some closure on this translation issue by comparing companion verses. I’m sure some will consider this a tempest in a teapot or making a mountain out of a molehill, but I can assure them it is not. Matthew 28:1 reads Οψε δε σαββατων, τη επιφωσκουση εις μιαν σαββατων…, which, according to Thayer’s ~ ‘the sabbath having just passed/after the sabbath, i.e., at the early dawn of the first day of the week (an interpretation absolutely demanded by the added specification of τη επιφωσκουση….).’ (A similar conclusion can be found in A Grammar of New Testament Greek, James Hope Moulton, vol.3, Syntax, p. 278.) In the intervening verses, an angel informs Mary Magdalene and the other Mary that “Jesus has risen.” Then, in verse 8, we are told that ‘Jesus meets them as they were on their way to report to the Eleven’ [i.e., early in the morning, as the sun was rising, Jesus, Who, they had been told, had already risen, met them.] Luke, for his part, uses the temporal adverbials ορθρου βαθεως (24:1) and ορθριναι (24:22), meaning ‘at early dawn’ and ‘early,’ respectively. Finally, John describes the ensuing events as happening πρωι σκοτιας ετι ουσης … “in the morning, early, still being dark.” For me, this examination is conclusive on two scores: 1) No contradiction exists between the writers in their respective descriptions of the time of day when the women went to the tomb—it was early-early; and 2) Jesus had obviously risen from the grave sometime prior to the dawning of the first day of the week and almost assuredly had done so just before the sabbath ended, thus confirming the underlying argument of this paper.

[3] Alfred Edersheim, in his book, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, recognizes the literalness of Jonah’s 3 days and 3 nights as Jesus applied them to His time in the grave as well as to the fact that “[t]he Sabbath about to open was a ‘high-day’—it was both a Sabbath and the second Paschal Day, which was regarded as in every respect equally sacred with the first…” Unfortunately, Edersheim assumes that the ‘Day of Preparation’ referred to is the Friday before the habitual Saturday Sabbath, perhaps because the Greek word is παρασκευη, which, by the time Edersheim wrote his book, had come to be used in Greek to mean ‘Friday,’ when, in fact, there would also have been a Day of Preparation/παρασκευη the day before the High Sabbath. (Cf. Book ii, p.200; Book ii, p.612, respectively.)

[4] The year is not important once the internal evidence is allowed to speak for itself.  There are many, however, who insist that Jesus was buried on Friday. Their argument, based on external ‘evidence,’ yields an inaccurate conclusion, resulting from insufficient information regarding the year of Jesus’ birth and the tradition that He was 33 years old at the time of His crucifixion as well as surrounding historical data. I am not an expert on the Jewish calendar; however, one such calendar that I consulted indicated that 14 Nisan fell on Wednesday in 30 A.D. Another site argues for 31 A.D. as the date when 14 Nisan fell on Wednesday. Many scholars put Jesus’s birth to be 4-3 B.C, which would mean Jesus was in fact approximately 33 years of age when He was crucified. The actual year is less a disagreement and more an ambiguity based on the fluidity of the Hebrew calendar. Either way, this is certainly within an acceptable margin of error for the year of Jesus’ crucifixion.

[5] A Grammar of New Testament Greek, James Hope Moulton, Vol III, Syntax by Nigel Turner, p. 291: the subject is Jesus (therefore, not impersonal). (Cf. Bauer, Griechisch-Deutsches Wörterbuch zu den Schriften des Neuen Testaments und der frühchristlichen Literatur, „wird wohl besser Ίησouς als Subj. ergänzt (Bl-D. § 129 Anh.) J. bringt nun schon den dritten Tag hin.“

[6] Well-researched posts can be found online which posit that today’s Easter celebration is nothing more than clothing the ancient spring equinox pagan festival in Christian terms, with a certain Sunday being specified, first to ensure that Easter would be on a Sunday; and, second, to ensure that all Christians would be celebrating Easter at the same time. This was imposed by Emperor Constantine and then by Rome, thereby assuring that this would be the case in the West. It would seem that Protestants have unwittingly or perhaps, unfortunately, willingly followed the ecclesiastical calendar and have been more or less forced to parrot the inaccurate account of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus by conflating these, the most important historical facts in history, into less-than-72 hours between His burial and resurrection.

[7] Personally, I am inclined to attribute the practice of meeting on the first day of the week as an attempt on the part of non-Judaizing early Christians to separate from their Judaizing counterparts and chose Sunday because it was ostensibly the day Christ rose from the dead, which it was according to the disciples’ experiential observation of the event, but which was not scripturally accurate. Just as the communal-type living arrangement initiated by the early Christians in Jerusalem proved to be impracticable, and therefore not of the Holy Spirit’s leading, so meeting on the first day of the week was a practice, based solely on experience, but scripturally uninformed. For Christians to worship on Sunday was ‘canonized’ by the emperor Constantine to copy the practice of pagan worship of the sun on that day, hence the derivation of the Anglo-German words ‘Sunday’/’Sonntag,’ a direct translation of dies Solis (Sol’s Day. Sol was an ancient Roman sun god.)

[8] While Matthew calls Barabbas “a notorious prisoner” (Matt. 27:16), Mark informs that “he had been named with the insurrectionists (στασιατης), who had committed murder in an insurrection” (Mark 15:7). Luke basically repeats Mark’s version by explaining in a more detailed fashion that “he had been thrown into prison for an insurrection that had occurred in the city and [for] murder.” (Luke 23:19). On the other hand, John calls Barabbas a ‘brigand/ highwayman’ (ληστης) (John 18:40).

[9] Ζηλωτης (קנא/qanaa). The following explanation is found in Thayer’s NT Greek-English Lexicon: From the time of the Maccabees there existed among the Jews a class of men, called Zealots, who rigorously adhered to the Mosaic law and endeavored even by a resort to violence…to prevent religion from being violated by others. … To this class perhaps Simon the apostle belonged, and hence got the surname ο ζηλωτης.

[10] According to one writer on the subject, the word John uses, ληστης, is the same word Josephus uses to refer to the Zealots. https://bible.org/seriespage/6-zealots#P24_5087

[11] There is at least one writer who suggests that Judas Iscariot was also a Zealot, while another writes that there are those who think that he derived his name from the terrorist group, the Sicarii, from the Latin name for the small knife they carried. https://adammaarschalk.com/tag/judas-of-galilee/ However, Thayer’s NT Greek-English Lexicon breaks down Judas’s surname Ισκαριωθ as איש קריות meaning ‘a man of Kerioth’ (a city in Judah). Did he betray Jesus because he realized that He had not come to overthrow the Romans and establish the Kingdom of God on earth? Or out of greed? As for Barabbas, I can only conjecture that, as he was being released, he came face-to-face with the Man Who was taking his place. When Jesus looked him square in the eye, Barabbas had to have experienced forgiveness; he may even have been drawn to Golgotha to witness his Savior being lifted up for him. By the way, the same word used by John to characterize Barabbas is used for the two criminals who were crucified on either side—ληστης. So, they too were more than common thieves.

By way of conjecture, the third cross may have been prepared for Barabbas to be executed together with the two criminals who very well may have been cohorts. But it is Jesus, the Only Begotten Son of God, Who emptied Himself and identified Himself with His supreme creation, man, as the Son of Man, Who takes the place of the insurrectionist and murderer, Barabbas. Rife with significance is Jesus crying out to His Father, as recorded in Matthew’s and Mark’s gospel: אלהי אלהי למא שבקתני. It can be said that at the moment He was crying out in anguish, our Savior was taking upon Himself all the hatred and murder, symbolized by Barabbas, that rages in the hearts of all men and upon which the sinless Father could not look; for this reason, the Son cries out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Barabbas, a name which means “son of a father,” may truly have become a son of the Father as all men do who place their faith in the One Who was lifted up for them.

[12] Just as the concept of ‘sabbath’ was recast in Christian terms by the ecclesiastical hierarchy, so too has the winter celebration of Christmas. Based on a pagan holiday, the December 25 holiday misidentifies the date of Jesus’ birth, which has resulted in sincere Christian believers being misguided to believe scripturally unsubstantiated claims regarding the Messiah’s birth and to disregard and neglect the express purpose of the Old Testament festivals, the deep significance of each of which pointed to the birth and life and second coming of the Messiah.