How Long Was Jesus in the Tomb?

Revised: 22-Dec-2012

We are not told on what night of the week Jesus ate the Passover lamb with his disciples. However, the Gospels make it clear that Jesus died and was buried on a Friday.^[18] According to Luke, the women who had come with Jesus from the Galilee witnessed the crucifixion (Luke 23:49). After also witnessing Joseph of Arimathea’s interment of Jesus (Luke 23:55), the women went to their lodgings and hurriedly prepared spices before the onset of Sabbath (Luke 23:56).^[19] When the Sabbath ended, they returned to the tomb carrying the spices (Luke 24:1).

Jesus prophesied that he would rise from the dead on the third day after his death. The Son of Man, Jesus said, would be turned over to the Gentiles, who would put him to death, but on the third day he would rise from the dead (Luke 18:31-33).^[20] Likewise, Peter proclaimed, “God raised him from the dead on the third day” (Acts 10:40).^[21]

If Jesus was buried late Friday afternoon, how long would he have had to remain in the tomb to fulfill his prophecy about his resurrection? To answer this question, we need to know something about the Jewish way of reckoning time. We also must examine two interesting Hebrew idioms.

• ^[1] Jehoshua M. Grintz, “Hebrew as the Spoken and Written Language in the Last Days of the Second Temple,” Journal of Biblical Literature 79 [1960]: 32-47. ↩
• ^[2] Almost the same expression that is found in Matthew 28:1 (“one of sabbath”) also appears in Acts 20:7 and John 20:1 (“one of the sabbath”). In Acts 20:7, “the first day of the week” refers to Saturday evening, not Sunday evening. Note that Paul “prolonged his speech until midnight” (RSV). According to Jewish halachah, Paul could not set out on his journey on the Sabbath, nor did he probably want to begin his journey after dark on Saturday night; therefore, he utilized Saturday evening to exhort the believers in Troas. ↩
• ^[3] Grintz was not the first to suggest that -ְאוֹר ל (’ōr l^e-) can refer to the night before the next day. For references to the works of others who have made this suggestion, see entry ἐπιφώσκω (epiphōskō) in BDAG (3d ed., 1999), 304; James Hope Moulton, Wilbert Francis Howard and Nigel Turner, A Grammar of New Testament Greek (4 vols.; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1908-1976), 2:471; and Matthew Black, An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts (3d ed.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), 136, n. 1. ↩
• ^[4] Randall Buth has expressed to me his feeling that one should take into account Luke 23:54: “It was Preparation Day, and the Sabbath was about to begin” (NIV). It is possible that in the verb ἐπέφωσκεν (epephōsken, "was shining," "dawning"), we have, for a second time in Luke’s narrative, the “light to” idiom. Buth suggests that the account of Jesus’ life once had two similar idioms: ’ōr l^e’eḥad bashabāt ("light to [day] one of the sabbath") and ’ōr l^eshabāt ("light to sabbath"). The idiom ’ōr l^eshabāt could have been lost when the narrative was telescoped. In such a case, one could suppose the following scenario: the women indeed went to the tomb on Saturday evening, but, because they were paralyzed by fear, they did not run to tell the disciples until the next morning (cf. Mark 16:8 and Matt. 28:8-10). ↩
• ^[5] The Greek Orthodox may have preserved an ancient tradition that reflects the time of Jesus’ resurrection. After ringing their church bells, at exactly 12:00 midnight on the eve of Easter (Saturday night), Greek Orthodox priests loudly proclaim, Xριστός ἀνέστη (Christos anestē!, "Christ has risen!"). The congregation responds, “Indeed, he has risen! Risen, just as he promised.” ↩
• ^[6] It was common practice among ancient Jews to refer to part of a day as one day, or part of a night as one night (compare, for example, Gen. 42:17-18; 1 Sam. 30:1, 12-13; 1 Kgs. 20:29; 2 Chron. 10:5, 12; Esth. 4:16-5:1). Fractional parts of years were treated in the same way: “In the thirty-eighth year of Asa king of Judah, Ahab son of Omri became king of Israel, and he reigned in Samaria over Israel twenty-two years” (1 Kgs. 16:29; NIV); “Jehoshaphat son of Asa became king of Judah in the fourth year of Ahab king of Israel” (1 Kgs. 22:41; NIV); “Ahaziah son of Ahab became king of Israel in Samaria in the seventeenth year of Jehoshaphat king of Judah…” (1 Kgs. 22:51; NIV). See Joseph Frankovic’s “A Different Way to Reckon a Day.” According to Frankovic, “Among the fragments of an ancient Rabbinic commentary on Leviticus is a midrashic comment on the phrase ‘in the third year’ from 1 Kings 18:1. Rabbi Yohanan, who lived about 220 C.E. in the Galilee, once remarked, ‘one month in the first year, one month in the last year, and twelve months in the middle.’ According to R. Yohanan’s method of counting, 14 months constituted three years.” ↩
• ^[7] In the New Testament, the phrase “sign of Jonah” occurs only in Matt. 12:39 and Luke 11:29, in each Gospel’s version of the “Against Seeking for Signs” story unit (Matt. 12:38-42; Luke 11:29-32). Therefore, “sign of Jonah” is found in only one of Jesus’ canonical teachings. Matthew, or a later copyist, may have added the words “the prophet” in the phrase “the sign of Jonah the prophet” (Matt. 12:39). Luke’s parallel lacks this addition. ↩
• ^[8] On the other hand, a Sunday-morning-resurrection scenario also will not eliminate the difficulty. A literal seventy-two-hour interpretation of “three days and three nights” would require Jesus’ resurrection to have taken place on the fourth day. Jesus prophesied that he would be raised τῇ τρίτῃ ἡμέρᾳ (tē tritē hēmera, "on the third day"; Luke 9:22; 18:33; cf. Luke 24:7, 46). Even assuming parts of days and nights for Matt. 12:40’s “three days and three nights,” Jesus could not have been resurrected before Sunday night (Monday according to Jewish reckoning of time)—part of Friday afternoon, all of Friday night, all day Saturday, all of Saturday night, all the daylight hours of Sunday, and part of Sunday night. This problem has been discussed at length in the scholarly literature, and readers should refer to standard commentaries. Mark replaces the Semitic “on the third day” with its Greek equivalent, μετὰ τρεῖς ἡμέρας (meta treis hēmeras, "after three days"; Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:34; see David Flusser, Jesus [3d ed.; Jerusalem: Magnes, 2001], 256, n. 7). “After three days” also appears once in Matthew (27:63), in a unique Matthean pericope. ↩
• ^[9] I assume that Matthew, rather than Luke, preserved the correct order of Jesus’ two illustrations: “the men of Nineveh…the queen of South” (Matt. 12:41-42; Luke 11:31-32) because “the men of Nineveh” had been mentioned in Luke’s preceding verse (Luke 11:30). ↩
• ^[10] In Mark’s 8:12 parallel, Jesus declares that no sign will be given. This change to the text of his source is typical of Mark’s midrashic style. Of the four versions of this saying, Matt. 12:39; 16:4; Luke 11:29; Mark 8:12—five versions, if we include John’s rough parallel in 2:18-22—only Mark has Jesus refusing to give a sign. ↩
• ^[11] Nor does he add the words “the prophet,” as in Matt. 12:39. ↩
• ^[12] The “three days and three nights” statement in Matthew appears to be a late insertion and was probably not in the earliest version of Jesus’ biography. Compare the Markan parallel to Matt. 16:4, Mark 8:12, where also there is no addition of the “three days” verse. In redacting the synoptic accounts, John’s author (in John 2:18-22) combines “sign” (based on Matt. 12:38-39; 16:1, 4; Mark 8:11-12; Luke 11:16, 29); destruction of the Temple (based on Matt. 26:61; 27:40; Mark 14:58; 15:29); “three days” (based on Matt. 12:40; 26:61; 27:40, 63; Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:34; 14:58; 15:29; Luke 24:7, 46); and Jesus’ resurrection (based on Matt. 27:63; Mark 14:58 [implied]). Luke’s Gospel does not have the expressions “three nights” and “three days and three nights,” and only once does the expression “three days” occur in it: “After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions” (Luke 2:46; RSV). ↩
• ^[13] William Foxwell Albright and C. S. Mann, Matthew (AB 26; Garden City: Doubleday, 1971), 159. Donald A. Hagner agrees: “An allusion such as this to Jesus’ death, burial, and (implied) resurrection would not have made much sense to the Pharisees (nor even the disciples) at this juncture, but in retrospect the words would have been filled with meaning…. The analogy with Jonah may well have originally concerned only the preaching of Jesus and Jonah (as in Luke 11:30; cf. Luz) and then later have been elaborated by the post-resurrection Church to refer to the burial (and resurrection) of Jesus” (Matthew [WBC 33A-33B; Dallas: Word Books, 1993-1995], 354). David Flusser wrote: “Luke 11:29-30 represents the ipsissima verbaJudaism and the Origins of Christianity (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1988), 526. W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, Jr., state: “Matthew has… added redactional vocabulary (ὥσπερ*, γάρ*, γῆ*) [in Matt. 12:40]” (A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew [3 vols.; ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988-1997], 2:356). Perhaps also arguing against Matthew’s version (12:40) of Jesus’ saying is the word-for-word quotation of part of the Septuagint’s translation of Jonah 1:17. Scholars have pointed out that Matthew, or a later editor of his Gospel, copied ἦν Ιωνας ἐν τῇ κοιλίᾳ τοῦ κήτους τρεῖς ἡμέρας καὶ τρεῖς νύκτας (ēn Iōnas en tē koilia tou kētous tries hēmeras kai treis nūktas, "was Jonah in the belly of the whale three days and three nights") from the Septuagint’s translation of Jonah 2:1 (Jon. 1:17 in English translations). So Davies and Allison: “Matthew…has assimilated to LXX Jon 2:1....” (A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, 2:356.) The identity with the Septuagint is assumed to be proof that, at this point in his account, Matthew rewrote his source copying from the Greek Bible he used. True, the twelve Greek words are exactly like the Septuagint, including its word order; however, the Septuagint’s translation is word-for-word with the Masoretic text. Therefore, Matthew’s text might represent an earlier Hebrew stage of the tradition. Without Luke’s parallel (Luke 11:29-32), which lacks the insertion, one would not be able to identify Matt. 12:40 as secondary. ↩
• ^[14] See BDAG, 732. ↩
• ^[15] Matthew Black wrote: “A Jewish reader of Mt. xxviii.1 would certainly understand τῇ ἐπιφωσκούσῃ [tē epiphōskousē] of the ‘drawing on’ of the first day of the week on the late evening of the Sabbath…. If this is the meaning of the verb in Mt. xxviii.1, how are we to reconcile it with Mark’s quite unambiguous ἀνατείλαντος τοῦ ἡλίου [anateilantos tou hēliou, "when the sun had risen" (Mark 16:2)]?…. We should…assume that Matthew is here independent of Mark, drawing on the original tradition which Mark, perhaps through a misunderstanding, is seeking to ‘improve’.... The order of events might then be: Jesus was crucified on the Day of Preparation for the Passover, which fell that year on a Sabbath; He was buried in the late afternoon or early evening of the same day, before sunset. A full day later, late on the Sabbath in our reckoning but early on the first day of the week, i.e. late Saturday afternoon or evening, in the Jewish, Mary Magdalene and the disciples went to the Tomb: Mary had waited till the Sabbath was officially over, then without delay, on the Saturday evening, made her way to the Garden” (An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts, 137-8). ↩
• ^[16] According to the synoptic Gospels, Joseph of Arimathea, after receiving Pilate’s permission to take Jesus’ body, wrapped it in a linen shroud, placed it in a tomb and sealed the tomb—before the Sabbath began. Apparently, Joseph did not anoint the body. However, according to the Gospel of John, the corpse was anointed by Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus (who is not mentioned in the synoptic accounts), before it was entombed (John 19:38-40). ↩
• ^[17] What motivated Matthew to write his replacement for a text like Luke 11:30? One can speculate that Matthew retold the “Against Seeking for Signs” story in this way so that his readers wouldn’t miss the secondary connection that the sign of Jonah had with the resurrection. “Matthew’s text seems to make explicit what is implicit in the speeches in Acts, namely, that the resurrection is God’s one great sign to Israel (cf. Acts 2.24, 32, 36; 3.15; etc.)” (Davies and Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, 2:355). ↩
• ^[18] The Greek word παρασκευή (paraskevē; preparation, day of preparation) appears in the New Testament six times (Matt. 27:62; Mark 15:42; Luke 23:54; John 19:14, 31, 42), always referring to the “day of preparation,” that is, the day before the Sabbath, as Mark explains (Mark 15:42). In Jesus’ time, the “Day of Preparation” was a technical term for “Friday,” the day on which Sabbath preparations had to be made (see Josephus, Ant. 16:163; Didache 8:1). ↩
• ^[19] Mark reports that the women purchased the spices, and this they did only “when the Sabbath was over” (Mark 16:1). ↩
• ^[20] Compare John 2:19, 21-22: “Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days’… But the temple he had spoken of was his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said” (NIV). ↩
• ^[21] Paul’s proclamation was identical: “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures…” (1 Cor. 15:3-4; NIV). ↩