RAFH

I'd love to work back then. Boy it double time on top of overtime and inclusive time as well. You could really rack up the billables.

Notsri

Hey, Amaleq. I personally do not think there's a contradiction here. Instead, it seems very probable to me (as I've mentioned at BC&H before) that Matthew's three days and three nights is merely a Hebraism. It should therefore not be adjudged according to the conventional diction or grammar or, by extension, certain modes of thought native to modern English. With that in mind I am of the opinion that in all likelihood the evangelist has used this idiom synonymously with both after three days and on the third day, with special emphasis being placed on this latter phrase (speaking offhand I believe he's changed virtually all of Mark's after three days to on the third day; IIRC after three days is used only once in the gospel). In any event, an apparently identical instance of this synonymity is found within, for example, the midrash-compilation Genesis Rabbah (56:1):

ביום השלישי של יותה* דכתיב ויהי יותה במעי הדגה שלשה ימים ושלשה לילות

On the third day of Jonah['s tribulation, he was revived], as it is written: "And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights."

*Mods: not that it's of great importance, but some of the Hebrew characters do not register properly; the nuns display as tavs.

Clivedurdle

Interesting problems with that one - how did the soul know where to return to?

And according to judaic practice, Jesus was not dead!