A Short Lesson in Time- We are not making this up!

OK. As you know tomorrow is Easter and yesterday was Good Friday. Which if you are like many people makes you wonder if the people who wrote the Bible could tell time. In the New Testament there are repeated comments meant to imply that Jesus would be dead for 3 days then rise from the dead. It states that he died around 3 p.m. on Friday and was already alive before sunrise on Sunday. That’s not even 48 hours or 2 days in modern time, so what’s up? The answer is of course that back around 30 A.D. people didn’t think of time the way we do. They didn’t have watches and clocks that could give you the exact time. (Only sun dials; hence the being about to know about what time it was.) They used the sun to count days. And according to the Jewish method of time used then a day started at sundown and any amount of time within a day counted as a day for counting purposes. For example, say you were walking to a town. You started out Monday morning and got there after it was dark on Tuesday night. We would say that it took you 2 days to walk there. But using the method of calculating time used by Jewish people of that era they would say it took you 3 days to get there. As you walked Monday, one day; and Tuesday, two days, and after sundown on Tuesday, so the start of Wednesday, making three days. (Also if it was a walled town they would say you should have been faster, as the gates were closed.) So as far as Easter goes the Jewish men who wrote about it would have seen after 3 p.m. on Friday as one day. Then sundown on Friday until sundown on Saturday as another day. And last sundown on Saturday until some time after sundown and before sunup as a third day. Hence three days time in less then 48 hours. –T