Do you remember hunting for Easter eggs, eating truckloads of chocolate, wearing your Sunday best and fighting through the crowds of people, to make it on time for Easter Sunday service?

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Not meaning to sound negative, our celebration traditions of Easter have almost nothing to do with God's instructions found in the bible... they do have much to do with ancient pagan cults though. A careful study of the bible and early church history will show that not only is Good Friday NOT the day that Jesus was crucified and Sunday NOT the day that He rose but that when we celebrate Easter in the traditional fashion we are grieving the Holy Spirit and dishonoring Jesus.

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The Sign of Jonah

Most agree that Jesus did rise three "days" after His death but in order to fit our thinking in with the current tradition of Good Friday, we have argued ourselves into believing that Friday to Sunday can be three days by adopting the Greek definition of a day as meaning any part of a day. Common belief is that Jesus was crucified on Friday afternoon and rose Sunday morning. If we accept that this could have consisted of a few hours on Friday and a few on Sunday then why not also accept that Jesus could have been crucified at 11:59 PM on Friday, and rose at 12:01 AM on Sunday... a mere 24 hours and two minutes.

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This distinction matters because the sign that Jesus gave to prove that He is the Messiah was the "sign of Jonah". Jonah was swallowed by and spent three days and nights in the belly of a great fish. In Hebrew tradition, three days meant exactly that... three days. Three is a common theme in the bible that means unity and accomplishment. Jesus said that He would spend three days in the belly of the earth, and that He would destroy the temple only to build it again in three days (referring to His body). In order for this sign of three days to be valuable as proof of Jesus' deity, it would have to entail three days and three nights... and it did.

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Which Sabbath?

It is critical to note three facts in order to recognize when Jesus really died and rose. The first is that there are Sabbaths mentioned and celebrated in the bible that are in addition to the recognized weekly Sabbaths (Saturday). These are high Sabbaths. The second fact is that Passover in the year 31 AD (The year Jesus was crucified) was on a Wednesday. Lastly, at this time in history, there was a debate among the jews as to which day to celebrate Passover. Jesus ate the sabbath one evening before most of the jews in Jerusalem. One would correctly assume that Jesus had the right date. 

 

With that in mind, let's follow the timeline provided by the four gospel accounts. The final thing to keep in mind that the Jewish tradition of marking days is different than what we are accustomed to today. At the time of Jesus (and still to this day) religious Jews considered a day to start at sundown, in contrast to the midnight transition we know in the Western world.

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Two days before the high annual Sabbath (The Feast of Unleavened Bread), Jesus was eating in the home of Simon the Leper when a woman came in to anoint Jesus in preparation for His burial. The next day (Wednesday), Jesus sent Peter and James to go to a specific home (probably that of John Mark) and prepare the Passover meal. That evening, He ate the Passover meal with His disciples then took them to the garden of Gesthemane to pray. It was here in the middle of the night that He was arrested. He was taken to the high priest's home, then to Pilate (the Roman Governor for the area). Pilate sent Him to Herod (the puppet King of Judea) and Herod sent Him back to Pilate. All of this took several hours and so by the time Jesus was tried and scourged, it was already nine o'clock in the morning, but still Wednesday... the daylight portion of Passover that year. At this time, He was crucified with two other criminals. Darkness covered the whole earth from noon until 3PM when Jesus gave up His Spirit. According to the Jewish practice of marking days, it was near to the start of Thursday, in this case an annual high Sabbath. This is where much of the confusion comes in.

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Being the day of preparation before the high Sabbath (first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread according to most jews), the religious leaders did not want bodies hanging on crosses after sundown so they asked Pilate to have soldiers break the legs of all three. Soldiers did break the legs of the two criminals so that they would die quickly but Jesus was already dead. Joseph of Arimathea took the body of Jesus and laid it in his own unused tomb near the crucifixion site.

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Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, that they might come and anoint Him (Mark 16:1). These women went (after a Sabbath according to Mark, to purchase spices on Friday (as shops would have been closed on that particular Thursday) and prepared them in order to anoint Jesus' body but stopped before sundown the same day because of the upcoming weekly Sabbath. The book of Luke explains that after the women prepared the spices and fragrant oils that, "they rested on the Sabbath according to the commandment" (Luke 23:56). As the next possible time to travel to the tomb would have been after sundown, they needed to wait a few more hours for light. In order to get Jesus prepared as quickly as possible, they left near dawn on Sunday morning (about ten hours into the day) but found that the tomb was already empty. This means Jesus had ALREADY risen.

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3 Days and Nights

If we count three days and nights from Wednesday afternoon we come to see that Jesus rose before sunset on Saturday. One bible verse (Mark 16:9) can seem to contradict this fact if it is read incorrectly. It reads as follows in various translations:

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• Now when He rose early on the first day of the week, He appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom He had cast seven demons. (Mark 16:9 - NKJV)

• Now when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven devils. (Mark 16:9 - KJV)

• Now when he was risen early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons. (Mark 16:9 - ASV)

• [After rising from the dead, Jesus appeared early on Sunday morning to Mary Magdalene, whom he had delivered from seven demons. (Mark 16:9 - The Message)

This verse seems best represented by the version in "The Message", indicating that Jesus, although not appearing to Mary and the others until Sunday morning, had already been risen for quite some time. Even the angel that spoke to Mary and the others attests to this when he announced that Jesus had ALREADY risen (Matt 28:1-7; Mark 16:1-8)