The "3 days & 3 nights in the earth" thing...
Offline On McKinsey's show, one guy kept saying that "3 days & 3 nights" wasn't meant to be literal. My cleanup of his claim:
"I think that "3 days and 3 nights" was a standard Jewish idiom for approximately 3 days - this phrase would hold true if Jesus was in the tomb for ANY PART of each of the 3 days - its just the way Jews referred to time passage.
You have to study Jewish terminology and usage - a "DAY-NIGHT" was one whole unit - any part of a DAY NIGHT - was 1 day and 1 night. In rabbinical thought, a day night was a "onah" - one unit - any part of that unit could be labled as one "onah". 1 samuel 30:12 also has three days and three nights for David not eating - but he was only on the 3rd day according to 1 Samuel 30:1. In addition to 1 Samuel, check out Esther 4:16 - 5:1 - 3 days "night or day" - did NOT mean 3 days and 3 nights. "Day night" terminology was standard in Jewish texts - did not mean a full day and a full night."
I don't think Dennis is as into ancient texts & their interpretation as you & Carrier; he takes things from a literal perspective. Reasonable, but possibly missing something. Of course, it's up to the claimant to establish the validity of an interpretation, which the poster didn't IMO, but do you have any thoughts on this? If not, is it possible to throw at Richard - should be a quickie...
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The Bible also has from Jesus's crucifiction to ressurection being 3 days and 3 nights - late Friday afternoon until dawn on Sunday!
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Sorry I wasn't clear - that's exactly what I was talking about! The claim is that it's not a contradiction because the jews counted any part of a day as a "day-night unit", so the prophecy wasn't wrong.
*I* don't buy these claims, but I like to be very clear on these things, so I'm asking if there's any substance to them - from one who is familiar with the language, colloquialisms, and context of the time. It very well could be as silly as it sounds on the surface, but if a claim is made that there's further context, I want to know if there's any real source of it.
That's like saying 2 + 2 = 5 isn't wrong, because maybe there was a "1" somewhere that wasn't mentioned!
I included that 3 days and 3 nights problem in my "Are you a true Christian" Test on OK Cupid. :
http://www.okcupid.com/tests/take?testid=7170693911873259163
That did piss Christians off!
Matt Shizzle has been banned from the Rational Response Squad website. This event shall provide an atmosphere more conducive to social growth. - Majority of the mod team
Deleted - it was a response to a deleted post, and now sounds silly...
I appended the meat of this to my earlier post for clarity.
You ask if there is substance to this debate, and there is. It lies in two parts.
Both of these points hold a standard to the Bible which must be taken literally and seriously. Allow me to explain.
The first point, as to whether or not the author of the text in question meant three days AND three nights or any part therein is something we will never know for sure and speculative, and as such depends primarily on the second point.
The Bible DOES claim inerrancy which other books of the time don't (2 Tim 3:16) and as such everything the author wanted to say was said exactly as he meant it too. If, that is, the Bible is inerrant. If God inspired perfectly this book that means everything God wanted to put in there is in there exactly.
The problem here is that the Bible says three days and three nights. The author doesn't say, nor does it state anywhere in the Bible, that three days and three nights means something other then a full 72 hour period.
Further, you are assuming the author who wrote the Gospel with the three days and three nights in it knew of the terminology, which probably wasn't the case in the synoptic ones, and especially if the death of Jesus and his temptation in the desert were all allegorical (which is likely the case).
So in the end, all you have is what the Bible actually states. In this case, the Bible claims 3 days and 3 nights, and not any parts within and as such anybody claiming otherwise is really just trying to plug a hole which is really too big to do so.
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