The Hoax of the Three Days and Three Nights
On the third day or in three days, simply means after a short period of time. (Hosea 6:2)
Night or day for three days, as we have in the request of Esther to fast for her, means three days or three nights whether one follows the tradition to fast by day or by night. Those terms were used here because it was in the Diaspora where most Persians followed the tradition to fast by night. So, Esther's maids who were not Jewish, would share Esther's pain by showing their solidarity with their night fast. (Esther 4:16)
The case of Jonah dispenses all explanation because it happened during a vision. Therefore metaphorical language. That could be the entire three days and three nights, since everything is possible in a vision or dream. (Jonah 2:1)
Now, for the three days and three nights we are talking about, for Jesus to spend in the tomb, according to Matthew 12:40, the writer must have had a very poor insight about parables or metaphorical language to draw his prophecy in the terms of Jonah's allegory. If he had used the language of Esther or Hosea, he could have saved his prophecy from being a hoax, but now he must account for the whole three days and three nights or parts thereof.
We don't even need another gospel writer to contradict the one of Matthew. This contradicts himself as he declares that the next day, the one following the Day of Preparation, the chief Priests asked Pilate for a guard of soldiers to watch the tomb area for three days. (Mat. 27:62-64) The Jewish Preparation Day is always Friday, and the following day is the Sabbath.
Then, after that Sabbath, as the first day was dawning, the women went to see the sepulcher, there was an earthquake, an "angel" came down from Heaven, removed the stone, and the tomb was empty. Someone had cheated the angel by raising Jesus from there long before the "angel" could at least be an eyewitness to the resurrection.
Based on the Jewish method that a whole day or night can be accounted for any part of the day or night, we can consider the first day for those minutes that took Joseph of Arimathea to get Jesus into the tomb before sunset. The first night from sunset to sundawn of Saturday, the second day from sundawn Saturday to sunset that Saturday, and the second night from sunset that Saturday to the sundawn of the first day. It was still dark when the women arrived at the tomb to find it empty. Therefore we are missing a whole day and a whole night to save Matthew 12:40 from becoming a prophetical hoax and a classical contradiction in the NT.
Any volunteers to solve this puzzle?