When people ask this question, they are usually asking a religious question about the reality of the Resurrection. However, there is a different mathematical question which can also be asked. That is a question about the chronology of the Resurrection, and the coherence of the calculation that it occurred on the third day. Exploring that issue raises some interesting implications for the expression and interpretation of doctrine.
1. Establishing the Chronology
Jesus died on a Friday (i.e., Good Friday). We can see this in the following text from John’s Gospel:
Now since it was preparation day, in order that the bodies might not remain on the cross on the sabbath,… the Jews asked Pilate that their legs be broken and they be taken down. (John 19:31)
This verse indicates that the day of the week is the Preparation Day which precedes a Sabbath. The Sabbath occurs on Saturday, but begins at sundown on the previous day (i.e., Friday) and that is why this Biblical verse records that there is a problem. Jesus has been placed on the Cross on a Friday and it can take several days to die on a cross (see Crucifixion). The authorities do not want Jesus hanging on the Cross on the Sabbath, so they have gone to Pilate to ask about speeding up Jesus’ death, so that his body can be removed from the Cross before sunset on Friday.
We know that Jesus rose early on a Sunday (i.e., Easter Sunday) because the Gospels state:
After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the tomb. (Matthew 28:1)
When he had risen, early on the first day of the week, (Mark 16:9).
These texts are referring to the day after the (Saturday) Sabbath, which was the “first day” (of the week). That day is Sunday.
This chronology shows that the Death and Resurrection of Jesus occurs between a Friday afternoon and a Sunday morning.
2. The Third Day
The chronology of the Resurrection is explained in the New Testament as being three days. For example, the Gospels say:
Jesus answered and said to them, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” … But he was speaking about the temple of his body. (John 2:19–21)
Jesus began to show his disciples that he must… be killed and on the third day be raised. (Matthew 16:21; see also Luke 9:22.)
Writing around twenty years after the Crucifixion of Jesus (i.e., c. AD 53), St. Paul makes a similar point:
For I handed on to you… that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures. (1 Corinthians 15:3–4)
St. Paul’s words raise a question of interpretation. Is St. Paul saying that the Resurrection itself fulfils Scripture (which is Pope Benedict XVI’s interpretation in Jesus of Nazareth, Part II), or is St. Paul saying that the fulfilment of Scripture occurs because the Resurrection happens on the third day?
Advocates of the latter interpretation often appeal to the following text from Hosea, as the Scripture which is being fulfilled:
He will revive us after two days;
on the third day he will raise us up,
to live in his presence. (Hosea 6:2)
But this text seems to describe the Resurrection as a two-part process, which consists of “revival” on one day, and then a “rising up” on the next day. That is different to how the Gospels depict the Resurrection.
Biblical scholars still debate how to interpret St. Paul’s words. However, an indisputable element of St. Paul’s claim is that the earliest generation of Christians believed that Jesus rose on “the third day.”
3. A Complication
But a complication arises because the Gospels seem to also record an alternative chronology. We can see the issue when Jesus makes his first Passion prediction in Mark’s Gospel:
He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer greatly… and be killed, and rise after three days. (Mark 8:31)
This is a puzzling text because it says that Jesus will “rise AFTER three days.” That text is so odd that over the centuries some Bible copyists have assumed that the word “after” must be a mistake, and so they have changed it in Biblical manuscripts. (Variant texts are recorded in Novum Testamentum Graece.)
One explanation for the oddness of Mark 8:31 is that perhaps it reflects an alternative timeline for the Resurrection. We know that some early Christians linked it to the story of Jonah, who was in the whale for three days and three nights (see Jonah 2:1). This alternative timeline can even be attributed to Jesus himself:
He [Jesus] said to them in reply, … “Just as Jonah was in the belly of the whale three days and three nights, so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights.” (Matthew 12:39–40)
The problem with this timeline is that a Resurrection AFTER three days and three nights is difficult to reconcile with a Resurrection which occurred “on the third day.”
Generations of exegetes have wrestled with this problem and some very imaginative solutions have been proposed. St. Augustine (d. 430) suggested that as there was a period of darkness while Jesus was on the Cross (i.e., Friday midday to 3pm), followed by a period of light (3pm–6pm) until the natural darkness of Friday night; then that means that two nights and a day can be said to have occurred on Good Friday itself. Then a further day and night naturally occur on Saturday, with the final day occurring on Easter Sunday morning. Thus Jesus was in the tomb both three days and three nights, and he can also be said to have risen on the third day. (See Harmony of the Gospels, Bk 3, Chap. 24, #66.)
Whether or not we agree with the details of Augustine’s attempt to harmonize the Gospels, what it shows is that the “third-day-ness” of the Resurrection is such a fundamental fact for Christians, that all other aspects of the Resurrection must be understood and harmonized with that fact.
As a result, both the Nicene Creed and the Apostles’ Creed are absolutely explicit that Jesus rose “on the third day.”
4. A Mathematical Problem
However, a question of basic arithmetic arises. If Jesus died on a Friday and rose on a Sunday, is that really a period of three days? Or is it actually just two days?
In the background of that question is a distinction between two completely different ways of counting, i.e., counting inclusively or exclusively.
People typically count “inclusively” when they are counting concrete objects. If there are three sheep in a field then they count each sheep: 1, 2, 3. If they apply that inclusive approach to days of the week, then the period from Friday to Sunday is three days.
However, when we are counting abstractions (like temporal durations), we tend to count “exclusively,” by not counting the first in the sequence. An example of this can be seen in the Liturgical year, where the beginning of Mary’s nine-month pregnancy falls on March 25th and ends with the birth of Jesus on December 25th. This period only equals nine months if March is excluded from the count. If we applied that same exclusive counting to counting days, then the period from Friday to Sunday is two days.
Over the centuries, different cultures have taken different approaches about when to use inclusive and exclusive counting. To this day, there are cultural differences about whether the twelfth night after Christmas should be celebrated on the 5th or the 6th of January. Similarly, English refers (exclusively) to a two-week period as a “fortnight” (i.e., a 14) while French can refer to it (inclusively) as a Quinzaine (i.e., a 15).
What this means is that there are cultural factors at work in determining whether the period from a Friday to a Sunday counts as three days or as two days.
5. The Concept of Zero
But how can mathematical truths be culturally relative? If different cultures have different answers to questions about the area of circles and the solution of algebraic equations, then doesn’t that mean that one culture must just be wrong? And so, similarly, if there are different cultural answers about whether Jesus rose on the second or third day, doesn’t that mean that one of those answers must be (mathematically) wrong?
Advocates of that kind of approach sometimes dismiss the use of “inclusive” counting for periods of time as an ancient mathematical error. They consider that the error arises because the ancient world did not have the concept of Zero.
In the book Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea (2000), Charles Seife describes how the concept of Zero had to be discovered and introduced to medieval European Mathematics. It was not a welcome addition. The Greeks and Romans were particularly opposed to Zero for ideological and cultural reasons, which led them to also struggle with the nothingness inherent to ideas such as the void and creatio ex nihilo.
As a result of not having the concept of Zero, medieval calendars were prone to basic mathematical errors. When Dionysius Exiguus (d. 544) developed the AD Calendar system he had to envisage Jesus as born at the age of 1, in the year 1, because he had no concept of a year zero during which Jesus had to live, in order to reach the age of 1.
Now that modern Mathematics has discovered the concept of Zero, perhaps we should just dismiss the ancient inclusive counting of days as a mathematical error? If so then that leads to the question of whether Christians today are guilty of an elementary mathematical error, in continuing to insist that Jesus rose on the third day?
6. Conclusion
Some of these mathematical questions were beginning to be asked in the sixteenth century. They did not find their way into the dogmatic decrees at the Council of Trent. However, they did generate a comment in the 1566 Catechism of the Council of Trent:
As He [Jesus] lay in the sepulchre one full day, a part of the preceding and a part of the following day, He is said, with strictest truth, to have lain in the grave for three days, and on the third day to have risen again from the dead. (Apostles Creed, Article V)
This is an explicit rejection of any attempt to “correct” the chronology of the Resurrection. But is it also a mathematical error, because the medieval Church didn’t properly understand the concept of Zero? To put it another away, is it significant that the 1992 Catechism avoids repeating the older Catechism’s view on the mathematics of the Resurrection (see CCC 638)?
A comment by Vatican II illuminates these issues:
By a tradition handed down from the apostles which took its origin from the very day of Christ’s resurrection, the Church celebrates the paschal mystery every eighth day. (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 106)
Here in 1963 the Church is teaching that Sunday Mass occurs on every eighth day of the week. Yet everyone knows that a week is only seven days long. We also know that Vatican II is not trying to teach a new mathematic understanding of an eight day week, as it explicitly describes a week as being seven days long in the Appendix to Sacrosanctum Concilium.
So, what Vatican II is doing in this text above is choosing to express itself in a particular culturally relative form of language, which involves counting inclusively. A week can be described as eight days long (inclusively) and as seven days long (exclusively). Both descriptions are true, and both are used by Vatican II. They are just different ways of making the same basic point.
Precisely the same issues arise with the Resurrection. It can be described as occurring on the second day (exclusively) or on the third day (inclusively). To ask whether only one form of language is “right” or “true,” is like asking whether centimeters are truer than inches.
What these issues show is that doctrinal claims can sometimes be expressed in linguistic formats which embed significant elements of cultural relativity. This can even lead to claims which can look on the surface as if they are contradictory, i.e., about the length of the week, or the chronology of the Resurrection. Yet, seemingly contradictory claims may actually be making exactly the same point, albeit using different cultural forms of language to do so. What this means is that when we encounter religious claims, we need to always be thoughtful about what is being claimed, and we need to be careful to clarify any cultural presuppositions within the language of the claims. Otherwise we can risk jumping to conclusions that disagreements, errors and heresies are present, where that is simply not the case.
12 thoughts on “Did Jesus Really Rise on the Third Day?”
Is it possible that John 19:31 is telling us that this particular Sabbath was not necessarily on Saturday because he says that it was a high day during Passover? If Jesus was crucified on a Wednesday before evening, this would allow for the 4 days and 4 nights to be completed before the women went to the tomb. A Sabbath can also be a special day that is not a Saturday (cf. Leviticus 16:31).
I should have said 3 days and 3 nights.
Yes there is another complexity about the dating of the death of Jesus, in that the Synoptic gospels depict the Last Supper on a Thursday, but John’s Gospel seems to depict it on a Wednesday (as in John’s gospel Jesus dies at the time that the Paschal Lambs are being slaughtered). Over the centuries there has been vast amounts of ink committed to resolving that particular problem. It’s solution may (or may not) be part of an eventual explanation of the chronology of the Resurrection. But exploring the question of the Last Supper adequately is an essay in itself, so there is definitely more to be said on these issues.
This is easily reconciled if someone has a basic understanding of Jewish practice. Everyone assumes that “sabbath” means Saturday, which it usually does. But when there was another Jewish holy day during the week, there were special sabbaths because of the holy day. The week that Jesus died had a holy day, Passover. The Last Supper was the Passover Seder.
Therefore, Holy Week had two Sabbaths, not just the one on Saturday. This is totally consistent with Jewish practice.
Jesus specifically said that he would be in the grave for three days AND three nights. Matthew 12:40 . The only way for this to happen is if Jesus had died on Thursday rather than Friday. The Last Supper was on Wednesday, not Thursday. Jesus was in the tomb all or at least part of Thursday, Thursday night, Friday, Friday night, Saturday, and Saturday night. He rose just before dawn on Sunday morning.
This timeline contradicts traditional notions, but those traditions are based upon total misunderstandings of the term Sabbath and its usage in Jewish practice.
Yes there is a possible solution along the lines you indicate. However, there is also an opposite argument which suggests that it is implausible that First Century Christians would have had such a basic misunderstanding of Judaism. Different scholars take different views on the matter.
The inconsistencies are easily explained once one faces the fact that the accounts are ahistorical. No, it was not customary for the Romans to allow the body to be taken down (in fact there is no other recorded instance). The body was left to decompose on the cross; denial of a proper burial was part of the punishment. And the Romans were exceedingly unlikely to make an exception for someone accused of sedition where a tomb might serve as a shrine for future insurrectionists. Nor were they about to accede to Jewish Sabbath customs. Once you accept this, it’s easy to see that what Rory describes is just later fabricators stumbling against each other. It might seem hard to believe but there are Christians who accept all this but it does not banish their faith. Dale B. Martin (whose Yale lectures on the New Testament I highly recommend) was an example.
Yes that is a possible solution, but solutions which reject the Resurrection in its entirety are at the more radical end of the scale (!). It is very difficult to know what a particular Roman would, or would not have done 2000 years ago, especially as the Romans were often pragmatic in their decision making and the political situation involving Jesus seems to have been unusually complicated. When Biblical Criticism deconstructs (or demythologizes) the gospels it purports to get back to a more accurate view. But in reality it is not stripping an ideology from a text to get accuracy, it is replacing one ideology with another to get an alternative version of the gospel. Many Christians are mindful of the fact that St Paul had something to say about people preaching alternative gospels (Gal 1.8).
The problem with CaptCrisis’ claim that the accounts are “ahistorical” is that, at the very least with regards to the crucifixion, they weren’t historical at all–they were contemporary. Crucifixion was employed in the Roman Empire until Constantine banned it in 337, long after even the latest theoretical date for the writing of the Gospels.
The authors knew exactly how crucifixion was carried out, and what the Romans did. The fact that the “fabricators stumbling against each other” all made the exact same claim–that Jesus was taken off the cross after death, in spite of normal Roman procedure–is noteworthy in and of itself, as is the widespread acceptance of the same among an audience that would see evidence to the contrary every single day. The idea that this is simply something they made up doesn’t pass the smell test.
Why the Romans allowed the bodies to be removed is a matter of debate. (One very plausible theory: Pilate’s political position was extremely precarious, due to the execution of his patron Sejanus for treason just a few years earlier, leaving him desperate to keep the peace in his province–and far more likely to accede to various demands of the Jews he was technically in charge of.)
That they allowed the bodies to be removed, however, is a near-certainty. It is simply not a mistake that anyone writing in that time and place would have been capable of making.
There were “many” gospels earlier than Luke (see Luke 1:1) and except for Mark, they’ve all been lost. We don’t know what they said. We can be confident that they were suppressed (i.e. deliberately not preserved and copied).
It is difficult to argue that documents were deliberately suppressed, without evidence of the thoughts and intentions of those allegedly doing the suppressing. An alternative factor in the loss of first century Christian documents (if there was such a loss) is the Roman war in Palestine and the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in AD 70. Some documents survived because they were hidden in caves (eg Dead Sea Scrolls), but others will undoubtedly have been lost in the fires and violence of the events.
CC, you’re moving the goalposts.
Suppression isn’t the question–the question is the fact that the Gospels were written while crucifixion was being used, and thus that it is unthinkable that the authors would make such a mistake. Unless, in this instance, it wasn’t a mistake, because something unusual happened.
Of course, even if we were to grant the assumption of suppression–which I do not–we run into the same problem, just one step removed: The “suppressors” also lived in a time and place when crucifixion was employed on a regular basis. (We know from the Muratorian Fragment that the Gospels had been whittled down to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John by the late 100s at the very latest.)
Still contemporary. Still no possibility that they would make such a “mistake,” and still be taken seriously by their audience.
Wow!