3 days and 3 nights

Suedaleg at aol.com Suedaleg at aol.com
Sat May 27 01:22:16 EDT 2000


Perhaps an answer to the question on Jewish reconing of time.  According to 
S. Robert Anderson, the Jews and their cousins counted time in whole segments 
even if only a part was used.  thus any part of a day would be the frist day, 
and any part of the third day would be the third day.  I know that we 
Westerners count days as 24 hours so 3 days from now would be 10:14 monday 
evening, but to them three days from now could be Sunday morning. It gets 
confusing but it explains some of the chronology in the OT histories.  

an example we still use is in music theory: a third step is only two full 
tonic steps from the first; there being no zero.  

I think the portion "and three nights" is probably emphatic.  We find this 
type of structure in Daniel 8:13,14 where the suspension of the sacrifices 
for the impurity of the temple is marked at literally "evening  mornings".  

I hope this helps your questions.

Dale Greenlee



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