There are questions in Scripture that divide the careless and reward the careful, and the timing of the Messiah's death and rising is one of them. Ask most believers what day He died and they will answer without hesitation, because a tradition has answered for them. But when you open the text itself, you find something more interesting than a settled answer. You find a set of fixed anchors that no model may move, one puzzling saying about Yonah that created the question in the first place, and several honest ways that students of the Word have tried to fit the pieces together. This lesson...
There are questions in Scripture that divide the careless and reward the careful, and the timing of the Messiah's death and rising is one of them. Ask most believers what day He died and they will answer without hesitation, because a tradition has answered for them. But when you open the text itself, you find something more interesting than a settled answer. You find a set of fixed anchors that no model may move, one puzzling saying about Yonah that created the question in the first place, and several honest ways that students of the Word have tried to fit the pieces together. This lesson will not hand you a verdict. It will hand you the verses. We will begin with what is actually written and undisputed, then state the problem plainly, then walk through the main models one at a time, giving each its strengths and its tensions without favoritism. Along the way we will look closely at the Hebrew idiom of counting days, the Greek of the resurrection morning, and the feast calendar of Leviticus 23 that frames the whole week. Bring your Bible, a pencil, and patience. The goal is not to win an argument. The goal is that you would be fully persuaded in your own mind, by the Scriptures...