A Good Criticism on “The Third Day”
By W. A. S.
FROM the figurative language of Christ to the carping Pharisees, in Matt. 12:40 (“three days and three nights in the heart of the earth”), some argue that the crucifixion was on Wednesday, and that the resurrection was in the closing hours of the Sabbath. This would place the resurrection on the fourth day, and would squarely contradict the oft-repeated Scripture phrase “the third day,” bringing confusion into the whole narrative. The phrase “the third day,” naturally suggests a series of three days, the events of the first being separated from those of the third by one full day only. An old writer and Greek scholar, Dr. Pearson, Bishop of Chester (England), shows that this plain suggestion in our English usage is most emphatically enforced by the original. His criticism on the phrase “the third day,” is so simple that the force of it is plainly apparent even to those of us who are not students of Greek. He says:— According to the constant language of the Greeks and Hebrews, he can not be said to rise to life on the third day, who died upon any other day between which and the day of his resurrection there intervened any more than one day.
He illustrates the usage by referring to our modern word “tertian” (from a root signifying third), commonly used by physicians to describe a fever that comes on every third day, one day intervening between the attacks. Any good dictionary gives the word. Dr. Pearson then quotes from the old Greek grammarians and medical writers to show the same use of the word tritaios among the Greeks, and concludes:— If the fever be a tritaios, the day of intermission is but one, if tetartaios, two. . . . Thus if our Saviour were one whole day in the grave, and died the day before, and rose the day after, he did rise tritaios; if he were two whole days in the grave, he rose tetartaios. . . . From trite comes tritaios, and from tetarte, tetartaios, in which hemera [day] is always understood. . . . Thus Christ did certainly rise te trite hemera [the third6day], he did rise according to the Greeks, tritaios, . . . that is, one day only intervening between the day of his death and the day of his resurrection.
The whole record agrees with this. Jesus was to be crucified and rise again “the third day.” Late on that Sunday, as the two disciples walked to Emmaus, they told their unknown companion about the crucifixion, and said, “To-day is the third day since these things were done.” Jesus showed himself to the disciples on that third day, the first day of the week, not at all to honor the day, but in order that they might be witnesses to the fact that “he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.”