The Weekday of the Cross

The church inherited Friday. The text is why the other two days are still argued. This page sets the three readings next to the sentences they use. It does not award the week to a system.

A card in the contradictions list already reads "three days and three nights" as inclusive reckoning on a Friday, the way "on the third day" is the phrase the Gospels repeat: Three Days and Three Nights. The Friday case below is that reading, stated fairly. It is not the only case a reader can make from the same books. The sign Jesus named is also on the prophecy list: The Sign of Jonah.

What all three are looking at

The women come to the tomb on the first day of the week, early (Mark 16:2, Luke 24:1, John 20:1). That part is not the fight. The fight is how many days sit between the death and that morning, and which day the Passover was.

Jesus says the Son of Man will be raised on the third day (Matthew 16:21, Luke 24:7, Luke 24:21, 1 Corinthians 15:4). He also says, about the sign of Jonah, three days and three nights in the heart of the earth (Matthew 12:40).

Mark says it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, when evening had come, that Joseph asked for the body (Mark 15:42). Luke says the Sabbath was beginning (Luke 23:54). John says the next day was a High Sabbath (John 19:31), and that the day of the trial was "the day of Preparation for the Passover, about the sixth hour" (John 19:14).

The synoptics say the meal was prepared on the day "when the Passover lamb was to be sacrificed" (Mark 14:12, Luke 22:7). Jesus says, "I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before My suffering" (Luke 22:15). John says the Jewish leaders would not enter the praetorium early that morning, "to avoid being defiled and unable to eat the Passover" (John 18:28).

Luke says the women prepared spices and then rested on the Sabbath (Luke 23:56). Mark says that when the Sabbath was over, they bought spices (Mark 16:1).

Those are the sentences. The three readings arrange them differently.

Friday

The meal is Thursday after sunset. By Jewish reckoning a new day has begun, so Thursday night is already the day of the Passover meal. Friday daytime is the day of Preparation before the weekly Sabbath. "The day of Preparation for the Passover" in John is read either as preparation for the Sabbath inside Passover week, or as a different way of naming Friday when the feast is on. The leaders' uneaten Passover in John 18:28 is read as the rest of the feast, the offerings of that day, not as proof that the lamb meal was still future. Or it is read as evidence that the last supper was a day early, and Friday is the day the lambs die, while the synoptic "Passover" is a meal kept on a Galilean clock or kept early on purpose.

Death Friday afternoon. Burial before sundown. Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday morning are "three days" by the inclusive count ordinary speech used: part of Friday, Saturday, part of Sunday, and "on the third day" Sunday. "Three days and three nights" is taken as the stock pair that goes with that count, not as a demand for seventy-two hours. The spice lines are one Sabbath: they prepare what they can before it, and they buy when it is past, the two verses summarizing one errand.

This is the reading behind the church's Friday, and behind the card that treats the hours as a Friday morning. It has to explain John's leaders who still had to "eat the Passover," and it has to explain Matthew 12:40 without a stopwatch.

Thursday

The cross is Thursday daytime. Friday is a high Sabbath, the feast day, not the weekly Sabbath. Saturday is the weekly Sabbath. Sunday is the first day. Two sabbaths in a row, which is what "the next day was a High Sabbath" is asked to carry, together with Mark's "the day before the Sabbath" (Mark 15:42).

The last supper is Wednesday evening. In this reading it may still be the Passover meal, and the "Passover" the leaders have not yet eaten on Thursday morning is the feast-day meal, not the lamb. Or the supper is the night before the official lamb, and Thursday is Nisan 14. The point of the reading is the extra night. Thursday night, Friday night, and Saturday night are three nights before Sunday morning, which is how this reading hears Matthew 12:40 without giving up a Sunday tomb.

The quiet day of the Friday calendar shrinks. The word that "the Passover is two days away" moves with it (Matthew 26:2). The spice lines can still be one purchase around the double Sabbath, or a purchase on Friday if Friday is not itself the rest-day. Readers who hold Thursday do not all draw the spices the same way. They agree that Friday is not the day he dies.

Wednesday

The cross is Wednesday afternoon, usually as Nisan 14, the day of the lambs. Burial before sundown Wednesday. Thursday is the Passover high Sabbath, and they rest. Friday they buy and prepare spices, which is how this reading hears Mark's "When the Sabbath was over" they bought spices, and Luke's "they rested on the Sabbath" as a second rest after the purchase. Saturday is the weekly Sabbath. Sunday before dawn the tomb is already empty, and the resurrection itself is placed at the end of Saturday or in the night, three days and three nights from Wednesday: Wednesday night, Thursday night, Friday night, and the days between.

"On the third day" is the sentence this reading has to work hardest to keep. The women are still coming early on the first day, which this reading treats as the discovery, not as the hour of the rising. Matthew 28:1, "After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week," is read with a plural or with the high Sabbath already past since Friday. Greek grammar here is part of the argument, and it is not a place for a bluff.

What not to do with this

Do not pick a day because a chart was confident. Do not treat Friday as if John 18:28 were not in the book. Do not treat Wednesday as if "on the third day" were a phrase the apostle did not care about. The tomb is empty on the first day of the week in every Gospel. The Lord was crucified under Pilate, dead, and buried, and raised. The weekday is a real question about the clock. It is not a question about whether the week happened.

The year those weekdays are fitted to is UnrollAD 30 or AD 33. The scenes of the days, without forcing them onto one of these three, are the lesson this section belongs to: The Week of the Cross.