Which day did Christ die?

[scottmaciver]

A friend of mine asked me the question, after some discussion at a fellowship last night. I think most, including myself for what it's worth, believe he died on the Friday, the day before the Sabbath, but Alan Cairns suggests it was Wednesday (Here). The Carins video is brief and just a few minutes long.

Cairns says there's nothing crucial at stake here, as both Wednesday and Friday are legitimate, in his own understanding. What are your own thoughts?

 

[bookslover]

Friday seems to work out the best, given the information we have from Scripture.

 

[Tom Hart]

I haven't listened to the audio. What does Cairns say about the day Christ rose?

 

[scottmaciver]

I haven't listened to the audio. What does Cairns say about the day Christ rose?

The audio is just a couple of minutes long Tom.

 

[Tom Hart]

The audio is just a couple of minutes long Tom.

Ah! Sorry, I hadn't read your post closely and assumed it was a full sermon. My mistake. I'll give it a listen.

 

[Tom Hart]

He says that he believes that Christ, dying late on a Wednesday, rose on Sunday after three days and three nights in the grave. Now, I've never been great at math, but are there not four nights between Wednesday evening and Sunday morning?

 

[alexandermsmith]

He says that he believes that Christ, dying late on a Wednesday, rose on Sunday after three days and three nights in the grave. Now, I've never been great at math, but are there not four nights between Wednesday evening and Sunday morning?

I suppose he would say that he was in three full days and three full nights from Thursday onwards. But his theory assumes that Thursday was a sabbath, on what does he base this? Friday was the Passover so even if we called that a sabbath it wouldn't account for a Wednesday death. And we're also told that at the beginning of the first day of the week after the sabbath the women went to the tomb and I think it's a fair reading of the text to say it assumes the same sabbath that was about to begin when Christ was buried is the one finishing when they go to the tomb.

Cairns' theory strikes me as rather rationalistic.

 

[lynnie]

I've heard the died on Thurs theory laid out and that is three nights so personally I believe that. I have never been comfortable trying to wrangle three nights out of a Friday death.

I don't know if this is true, but I've read that after the great dispersal of 70 AD and the calendar changes by various rulers of the past, there is no longer a crystal clear and indisputable historical Jewish record of which day was the first day of the Passover (a Sabbath separate from the 7th day sabbath) that year. People even argue about the year itself.

 

[C. M. Sheffield]

The greater difficulty in positing a Wednesday or Thursday death is making that fit with the chronology of the earlier events of the week. Even with his death on Friday, the events of the final week are so numerous as to make fitting them all in before Wednesday or Thursday impossible to my mind. I think the traditional answer to this difficulty (reckoning any part of a day for a whole day) is preferable.