Matthew 12:40

[rstrats]

8 hours ago, Carborendum said:

"The example of Esther should be really obvious."

I don't see how it's an example.  As I said, it doesn't preclude at least of portion of 3 daytimes and/or at least a portion of 3 night times. 
 

[rstrats]

8 hours ago, Vort said:

"The Book of Mormon warns most forcefully against those who call themselves rstrats."

What the heck have I done to you for you to say something like that?   
 

[Vort]

2 hours ago, rstrats said:

What the heck have I done to you for you to say something like that?   
 

Your name is an anagram of "Strats", and I'm more of a Gibson man.

[mordorbund]

Just to bolster @anatess2's position:

 

Days and nights as a day

Besides the example in Ether we also have 1 Samuel 30:12-13

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And they found an Egyptian in the field, and brought him to David, and gave him bread, and he did eat; and they made him drink water;

12 And they gave him a piece of a cake of figs, and two clusters of raisins: and when he had eaten, his spirit came again to him: for he had eaten no bread, nor drunk anywater, three days and three nights.

13 And David said unto him, To whom belongest thou? and whence art thou? And he said, I am a young man of Egypt, servant to an Amalekite; and my master left me, because three days agone I fell sick. (some translations "for I have been sick 3 days")

The same phrase is, of course in Jonah 1:17, though I guess Jonah may have been spit up in the night so the statement could still be strictly literal.

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Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

 

nth day after n days

And then we have such strange days as Numbers 19:11-12

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He that toucheth the dead body of any man shall be unclean seven days.

12 He shall purify himself with it on the third day, and on the seventh day he shall be clean: but if he purify not himself the third day, then the seventh day he shall not be clean.

 If a person is unclean for seven days, he should not be clean again until the eighth, not the seventh. But we also have Leviticus 14:38-39

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Then the priest shall go out of the house to the door of the house, and shut up the house seven days:

And the priest shall come again the seventh day, and shall look: and, behold, if the plague be spread in the walls of the house;

Let's do one more just to round out the scripture portion. 1 Kings 20:29

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And they pitched one over against the other seven days. And so it was, that in the seventh day the battle was joined: and the children of Israel slew of the Syrians an hundred thousand footmen in one day.

... but that same day no one was slain because it was just pitched?

 

A Jewish perspective

Finally, we have the Jewish Encyclopedia, which I'm guessing doesn't care about the crucifixion debate. 

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DAY (Hebrew ,"yom")

In the Bible, the season of light (Gen. i. 5), lasting "from dawn [lit. "the rising of the morning"] to the coming forth of the stars" (Neh. iv. 15, 17). The term "day" is used also to denote a period of twenty-four hours (Ex. xxi. 21). In Jewish communal life part of a day is at times reckoned as one day; e.g., the day of the funeral, even when the latter takes place late in the afternoon, is counted as the first of the seven days of mourning; a short time in the morning of the seventh day is counted as the seventh day; circumcision takes place on the eighth day, even though of the first day only a few minutes remained after the birth of the child, these being counted as one day. Again, a man who hears of a vow made by his wife or his daughter, and desires to cancel the vow, must do so on the same day on which he hears of it, as otherwise the protest has no effect; even if the hearing takes place a little time before night, the annulment must be done within that little time. The day is reckoned from evening to evening—i.e., night and day—except in reference to sacrifices, where daytime and the night following constitute one day (Lev. vii. 15; see Calendar). "The day" denotes: (a) Day of the Lord; (b) the Day of Atonement; (c) the treatise of the Mishnah that contains the laws concerning the Day of Atonement (See Yoma and Sabbath).

 

[mordorbund]

Having said that, I also reiterate what other posters have emphasized that this is not a particularly LDS position,  but the consensus of biblical scholars. @rstrats I'm guessing you came here for the uniquely Mormon perspective since you already know the traditional Christian arguments. So here goes:

It looks like the idiom "n days and n nights" may have been lost after arriving in the New World (we only find it in the christotypal conversion story of Alma). When it comes to actual prophecies of Christ's death and the recording of the New World sign of His death, The Book of Mormon drops the "nights" terminology and just sticks with round "days".

1 Nephi 19:10

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And the God of our fathers, who were led out of Egypt, out of bondage, and also were preserved in the wilderness by him, yea, the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, yieldeth himself, according to the words of the angel, as a man, into the hands of wicked men, to be lifted up, according to the words of Zenock, and to be crucified, according to the words of Neum, and to be buried in a sepulchre, according to the words of Zenos, which he spake concerning the three days of darkness, which should be a sign given of his death unto those who should inhabit the isles of the sea, more especially given unto those who are of the house of Israel.

2 Nephi 25:13

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Behold, they will crucify him; and after he is laid in a sepulchre for the space of three days he shall rise from the dead, with healing in his wings; and all those who shall believe on his name shall be saved in the kingdom of God. Wherefore, my soul delighteth to prophesy concerning him, for I have seen his day, and my heart doth magnify his holy name.

Helaman 14:20, 27

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But behold, as I said unto you concerning another sign, a sign of his death, behold, in that day that he shall suffer death the sun shall be darkened and refuse to give his light unto you; and also the moon and the stars; and there shall be no light upon the face of this land, even from the time that he shall suffer death, for the space of three days, to the time that he shall rise again from the dead.

...

And he said unto me that while the thunder and the lightning lasted, and the tempest, that these things should be, and that darkness should cover the face of the whole earth for the space of three days.

3 Nephi 8:3, 23

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And the people began to look with great earnestness for the sign which had been given by the prophet Samuel, the Lamanite, yea, for the time that there should be darkness for the space of three days over the face of the land.

...

And it came to pass that it did last for the space of three days that there was no light seen; and there was great mourning and howling and weeping among all the people continually; yea, great were the groanings of the people, because of the darkness and the great destruction which had come upon them.

 

So as stated before, the important thing is the Christ died and was resurrected. Latter-day scripture affirms He rose the third day. Beyond that, it doesn't really matter if He was in the tomb 3 nights or 2 nights or 11 nights of those 3 days. 

[rstrats]

4 hours ago, mordorbund said:

 

See below:

re:  "Besides the example in Ether we also have 1 Samuel 30:12-13"

 

As I pointed out previously, Esther is not an example, nor is the Samuel account.  Neither one precludes at least a portion of 3 daytimes and/or at least a portion of 3 night times. 

 

 

 

re:  "Having said that, I also reiterate what other posters have emphasized that this is not a particularly LDS position..."

 

Since I hadn't realized that the LDS position is that the Messiah was referring to calendar days when He said 3 days, but meant 3 night times when He said 3 nights, I shall move on and not take up any more bandwidth. 

[Guest]

14 hours ago, rstrats said:

I don't see how it's an example.  As I said, it doesn't preclude at least of portion of 3 daytimes and/or at least a portion of 3 night times. 

As I said, it only fails because you're already decided your point of view and won't deviate from it unless the wording is EXACTLY as you want it.  So, my question remains: Why is this so important to you?  What do you hope to accomplish?

[anatess2]

16 hours ago, rstrats said:

 

That's fine, but they're issues for a different topic.  This topic is concerned with one thing and one thing only; was it common to forecast or say that a daytime or a night time would be involved with an event when no part of the daytime or no part of the night time could have occurred? 

Yes.  Very much so.  @mordorbund gave you a whole slew of  examples (I'm quite impressed that he took the time to pull all those out of scriptures for you - he's a better man than I).  But for some reason, you don't think they are "valid" examples.  So, I guess we can't help you because you're seeking  a specific answer that we have no clue what it is.  So this is how this conversation has been going from my perspective - Q:  What is pi?  A:  3.14  Q:  No, that's not it because this book here says pi is longer than that.  A:  how about 3.1415.  Q:  Nope, too short.

So, let's make this very simple since you don't accept mordobumd's examples.

Q:  Was it common to forecast or say that a daytime or a night time would be involved with an event when no part of the daytime or no part of the night time could have occurred?

A:  Yes.  Believe it or not.

Any other questions?

[mordorbund]

4 hours ago, rstrats said:

re:  "Having said that, I also reiterate what other posters have emphasized that this is not a particularly LDS position..."

 

Since I hadn't realized that the LDS position is that the Messiah was referring to calendar days when He said 3 days, but meant 3 night times when He said 3 nights, I shall move on and not take up any more bandwidth. 

Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. Uniquely Mormon scripture only details the number of days - not the number of nights. So if scholars come to a consensus that Christ was dead for 11 nights during those 3 days, then we would probably shift to that model the same as the rest of Christianity and you wouldn't see any great schism (I daresay you wouldn't see any such schism in the rest of Christianity either). And even for what 3 days means (calendar days vs 24-hour periods), I don't think there's strong feelings either way except that there's no need to swim against the tide when there's ambiguity.

As a rule, the Mormon position on things that aren't revealed tends to be the default Christian position. We have enough idiosyncratic doctrines based on new scripture that apologists already defend, we don't need to invent new ones based on one verse of the Bible.

[DennisTate]

On 12/4/2017 at 11:32 AM, rstrats said:

1. The Messiah said that three nights would be involved with His time in the "heart of the earth".

2. There are some who believe that the crucifixion took place on the 6th day of the week with the resurrection taking place on the 1st day of the week.

3. Of those, there are some who believe that the "heart of the earth" is referring to the tomb.

4. However, those two beliefs allow for only 2 nights to be involved.

5. To account for the discrepancy, some of the above say that the Messiah was using common figure of speech/colloquial language of the time, i.e., that it is was common to forecast or say that a day or a night would be involved with an event when no part of the day or no part of the night could occur.

6. In order for someone to legitimately say that it was common, they would have to know of more that 1 example to make that assertion.

 

I wonder if anyone looking in knows of any examples to support an assertion of commonality?

Personally.... I believe in a Wednesday crucifixion.......

the annual Sabbath of the First Day of Unleavened Bread would be on Thursday.......

the spices for the burial of Messiah Yeshua - Jesus would be prepared on Friday........

the women go to the tomb very, very early Sunday morning but Messiah Yeshua is already risen.......

I was taught that he rose exactly 72 hours from the time of his burial..... .late Wednesday afternoon or early evening.... before the High Sabbath began at sunset on Wednesday... that would end Thursday at sunset....... So the resurrection would be late Sabbath afternoon.... or early evening... .before sunset........