John Kesler

Your interpretation would mean that the Egyptian hadn't eaten or drunk before he "fell sick," when I think the implication from the text is that because he got sick, his master left him without food or drink.

Or it could mean parts of 40 days. "Forty days and forty nights" is a formula that also is used of the durations of Moses' (Ex. 34:28; Dt. 9:9) and Jesus' (Mt. 4:2) fasts, but I wouldn't take these too literally either.

Matthew 12:40 is the only place which speaks of Jesus' entombment lasting "three days and three nights." Other NT references, even in Matthew, use less specific language:


*Matthew 17:23 ..."on the third day he will be raised"
*Matthew 20:19..."on the third day he will be raised"
*Matthew 26:61..."destroy the temple of God and to build it in three days" (see also Matthew 27:40)
*Matthew 27:64..."Therefore command the tomb to be made secure until the third day"

In Matthew 12:40, Matthew, per his usual practice, has tried to connect Jesus with an OT "prophecy," and the mention of Jonah in the original saying (preserved in Luke's version) proved too tempting for Matthew not to make the resurrection another "sign." That Friday-Sunday morning doesn't equal 72 hours was of no consequence to him. For that matter, unless one can prove that exactly 72 hours elapsed from Jonah 1:17 to 2:10, the basis of comparison was an "error" to begin with.

yummyfur

Did you actually read my post, while I posit that there are two events being talked about, in fact my first part explained that there is in actuality no problem between correlateing the two parts as the same time. I just added that part to clarify the text further. I seriously doubt that he ate and drank at either exactly the same time he got sick or his master left him, and it seems unlikely, though possible that he ate after these events, therefore his last food and drink were in all probability before this event.

Not that this matters much as "three days ago" and "three days and three nights" are not in conflict, as I already demonstrated.

Sure possibly, but there is no conflict between the forty days , and the forty days and nights. It's elementary language usage. Especially when one states "at the end of forty days" which is not the same thing as "on the fortieth day"

I have to question wether you have been reading the previous posts as this makes it seem like you haven't. please read them, as I really can't waist my time going over this again.

I actually already said that the "three days and three nights" doesn't have to be 72 hours, I will accept it can be partial daytimes and nightimes, in the post that I first mentioned it, it was more of an offhand statement. But three days and three nights has to include a number of nightimes and daytime, some of them partial to be correct, the resurrection story does not, I've already enumerated the minimum.

I have never had a problem with the plain old "three days", it's a vaguer time reference, to fit the resurrection, and this whole issue came up becuase I think someone involved in creating Matthew misinterpreted what the sign of Jonah meant, and thought it was a reference to the belly of the whale story, and so added it in, and it was my supposition that the conflict with the ressurection story was one of the proofs. This was all in previous posts.

Also "the mention of Jonah" is "preserved" right there in that section of Matthew, so we don't need to look to Luke to find it, you might want to reread the text. This was all covered in previous posts.

John Kesler

Uh, "yummyfur," someone who can't spell "whether," and doesn't know the difference between "waste" and "waist," should avoid condescending lectures about "waist[ing] [sic] [your] time." I have been "reading the previous posts," though I wonder why. I try to be civil with the people I interact with, but after the haughty tone of your last post, I feel no need to continue the civility. Your comment about not reading posts is especially ironic in light of this:

What I said is that, "the mention of Jonah in the original saying [is] preserved in Luke's version," not that the name "Jonah" doesn't appear in Matthew. Of course I know that the name "Jonah" is in Mathew. Matthew has added the connection of Jonah with the resurrection, when the original connection was to the preaching of repentance, which is the sole "sign" mentioned by Luke. This will be my last post in this thread. If you want to insist that Matthew 12:40 is an error, then go ahead. But don't expect any informed biblicists to be impressed. You may also want to invest in a grammar book. Look up "run-on sentences."

Notsri

Yummyfur, listen, I didn't respond to each and every point of yours the other day for two reasons. One was that I simply didn't have the time. I posted the excerpt from the Midrash because it took just a few minutes. On the other hand, I didn't feel particularly compelled to address each point, stemming as they did from your one premise, that "three days and three nights" refers to a period literally spanning three days and nights (whether partial or entire). The text from the Midrash disproves the premise and, a fortiori, the subordinate points as well; I was hoping that you would read the Midrash carefully, and recognize that.

Rather than review the midrashic text in detail, I'll just note—something that had escaped my attention before—that Esther Rabbah is (most probably) working from a midrash in Genesis Rabbah. Admittedly, that "three days and three nights" and "on the third day" are used coterminously in Esther Rabbah, is only implied (though, considered carefully in context, there's no denying the connection IMO). In the Midrash's likely source, though, Genesis Rabbah 56:1, the synonymy is made explicit:

"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.'"

So I would merely reiterate, then, that in the light of the one Midrash and now two, Matthew 12:40 does not conflict with the timeline for Jesus' resurrection given also in 16:21; 17:23; 20:19, or even 27:63, where "after three days" is used, as "three days and three nights" is used without the specificity that you assume. There is no need to read 12:40 in the (fairly) literal sense that you propose, as these Jewish texts illustrate (and I think that John Kesler's examples were no less probative in this connection).

Regards,
Notsri

Chili

I would think that the sign of Jonah is given prior to the three days wherein the dead are raised on the third day.