This is a review of Kenneth Doig’s The Friday Crucifixion. I mean to use Doig’s remarks as a teaching moment, to direct us to the spirit and the truth of the matter. Kenneth Doig does a good job of bringing up the contentions of the back sliding Church with which Christians everywhere are so familiar, yet deprived of knowledge and truth, and kept in ignorance concerning the lie that has been so carefully sold to them. Doig begins:
The Crucifixion of Jesus ranks as a top event in the history of Mankind. Was it Good Wednesday, Good Thursday, or Good Friday? The body of Christ would be a little stronger if we all observed the sign of God’s forgiveness on the same day.
The Church never observed a particular weekday to commemorate the crucifixion. The insinuation of this remark therefore is that Sunday is the sign to be observed that goes with the Friday. It is usually stated that Sunday is observed to commemorate the resurrection. But since the Scripture has already given the divine sign to mark a difference between God’s holy people and everyone else, the Sabbath, the Sunday cannot replace it (cf. Exodus 31:13).
The allegation of the Apostate Church is that Christ kept the Law so they do not have to keep it, and that he died so that it would not apply any more. If either of these points is true, then why did he die in the first place? Why didn't he just wait until the Law that required his death to pay the penalty for sin was abolished. Then he would not have had to die for sin.
The perversion of chronology, and the theology of the cross put with it is due to widespread Christian rejection of the the Law and Prophets, resulting in a false Christianity, a false forgiveness, and a false justification. So as I review Doig’s crucifixion chronology, we must keep in mind that much of the Church’s tradition is really the Devil’s counterfeit to deceive Christians into following the ancient customs of Baal. Let’s look at Doig’s next remark:
** Luke “carefully investigated” and presented an “orderly account” (Luke 1:3) of the events in the life of Jesus. He told us, “The women who had come with Jesus from Galilee followed Joseph and saw the tomb and how his body was laid in it. Then they went home and prepared spices and perfumes. But they rested on the Sabbath in obedience to the commandment. On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb.”
Luke did not really say all the things quoted. The things quoted come from the traditions and assumptions of Luke’s translators. What Luke really wrote is this:
23:54 And it was the day before a Sabbath.† 55 Now the women who had come with him out of Galilee followed after, and saw the tomb and how his body was laid. 56 and they returned and prepared spices and perfumes.†
24:1 And on the one Sabbath¹ they rested [according to the commandment],† but on the first² of the Sabbaths, at deep dawn they came upon the tomb, bringing the spices which they had prepared. 2 And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3 but when they entered, they did not find the body of Adŏnai Yĕshua.
The first mentioned Sabbath was an annual one, and so the day before it was not a Friday, but a Wednesday. The second mentioned Sabbath was the weekly one. This was the resurrection day. You may follow the link and read the notes on the Luke passage.
Doig remarks:
Jesus died and was laid in the tomb. The women went home and prepared spices and perfume before sunset. After the sun went down it was the next Jewish day, Sabbath night.
But Mark 16:1-2 says.
1 And when the Sabbath was past, Miriam Magdalene, and Miriam the mother of Jacob, and Salome, bought spices, that they might come and anoint him. 2 And very early on the first of the Sabbaths, they arrived at the tomb at the rising of the sun.
Please note that it says they bought the spices after the Sabbath. They cannot prepare them before they buy them, so they must have prepared them after that annual Sabbath. Then vs. 2 says that the women went to the tomb on the Sabbath of the resurrection morning. Doig states:
They then rested “in obedience to the commandment,” which was “remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.” (Exodus 20:8-11, Deuteronomy 5:12-15) This is the Saturday Sabbath according to the Fourth Commandment. It was also a “special Sabbath” (John 19:31) or “high day” because Passover also fell on that Saturday.
But Luke did not say which commandment to rest on which Sabbath it was. It was an annual Sabbath and the command to rest on it is in Lev. 23:7. Also, Doig appears to think that only when a feast day falls on the weekly Sabbath, that it (the seventh day) becomes a special sabbath or high day. This is high deception, because an annual Sabbath can fall on any day of the week, and it is high or special regardless of the day of the week it falls on. It does not need to coincide with the weekly Sabbath to be a great Sabbath. Doig next remarks:
What does Luke tell us immediately followed that Sabbath? “The first day of the week,” Sunday. Luke gives an “orderly account” and does not skip a day or two. He confirms that the Saturday Sabbath/Passover was immediately followed by Sunday. If we can literally believe Luke, there is no intervening Thursday or Friday.
I already corrected his mis translation pertaining to the “first day of the week”. The day after the spice purchase and preparation was the first weekly Sabbath after Passover (cf. Lev. 23:15). Now Luke does give an orderly account. There is no reason to suppose that a Wednesday crucifixion and Sabbath resurrection implies the account is not orderly. He describes the weekly Sabbath following in order the annual Sabbath in chapter 24. Orderly does not mean every day must be covered. Clearly Mark 16:1 tells us what happened after the annual Sabbath, on Friday of that week. Luke covers this also in chapter 23:56a. It is placed in the narrative after the annual sabbath and before the next weekly Sabbath. Doig’s logic is flawless (based on his received translation). His assumed translations are not. Put garbage into perfect logic, and you get garbage out. Doig remarks:
First, the Sign of Jonah was Jesus’ public prediction of His death and resurrection. It was not a prediction of his burial and resurrection as claimed with a Wednesday crucifixion. Jesus died at the ninth hour of daylight, and the count begins then.
Yes, often my fellow defenders of the Wednesday crucifixion mess up on this point, but not to the extent that Doig supposes. Jonah was alive, but in distress, when he used the grave idiom. And he was also in distress before the fish swallowed him. The key to everything is to realize that the Passion narrative is based on a sunrise epoch for each 24 hour day (of the three days), and that each 24 hour day is a day and a night in that order. Only the Sabbaths in the narrative begin at sunset.
1 Then, Yonah prayed to Yăhwēh his Almĭghty from the belly of the fish. 2 Then, he said, “I had called¹ out to Yăhwēh in my distress; then he answered me. From the womb of the grave I had cried for help. You had heard my voice. 3 ¹Thus, You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas. And the current went all around me. All your breakers and your waves had crossed over me.”
It is plainly evident from the narrative that he is relating a “grave” experience before the fish swallowed him. To be sure he relates it in his prayer after the fish swallowed him. But he is referring to what happened before the fish swallowed him. The fish was the answer to the prayer. Now, Yeshua took two phrases from the book of Jonah, “heart of the sea” and “the earth with its bars” and recombined them into “heart of the earth” and then applied this to the “three days and three nights.” He was in the grave three days and three nights by inclusive counting, in which we reckon the first part day as a whole number. However, by taking “heart of the earth” to include the type of the “heart of the seas,” it may be observed that the three days and three nights include the period of suffering before he was actually put in the grave! Heart of the earth comes to a double sense. The heart of the land, Jerusalem, where he suffered first before he died, and then the heart of the earth (ground), in which he was buried. The three days and three night, therefore, may be understood as most literal, from dawn on Wednesday to just before dawn on the Sabbath. This period contains exactly three days and three nights. Doig remarks on his reinterpretation of Matthew 12:40:
This is confirmed because Jesus “was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit. After being made alive, he went and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits.” (1 Peter 3:18-19) At the ninth hour Jesus was made alive in the Spirit and went into the Abyss to preach forgiveness to the wayward angels (that is another story). Jesus was not made alive in the Spirit hours later when He was buried. His Spirit was never extinguished.
The above quote is Catholic nonsense. Let us see was Peter really said:
18 For Mĕssiah also suffered for sins once, the just for the unjust, in order that he might bring us to the Almĭghty, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive by the Spĭrit, 19 by which Spĭrit, also, concerning the spirits in prison (as one who had been departed) he proclaims victory...
With the words made alive by the Spirit
Peter is referring to Messiah’s bodily resurrection. For it was his body that was made alive, and his body was not made alive until the resurrection. Doig wants him to be dead but not dead. The reality is that he was dead, and his spirit was sleeping, as the first death is described. His dead body was made alive by the Spirit and his sleeping spirit awakened at the resurrection. Yeshua did not go anywhere during his sleep in the grave to preach to dead spirits. This is a Catholic myth. But by his resurrection he proclaims victory concerning the spirits that were confined in the abyss after trying to corrupt the seed of men, to prevent the Messiah from coming. This episode is related in Genesis 6.
No he was not made alive at the 9th hour. He died at the 9th hour and the Făther received his sleeping spirit. His resurrection proclaimed the victory over the rebellious angels, and no forgiveness is extended to them, but as Jude says, they await the judgment (Jude 1:6). Doig implies he was made alive in the Spirit (spirit) at the 9th hour. This bit of circular reasoning implies that he was dead in spirit before being made alive in spirit which implies he contradicts himself. As I said, “made alive by the Spirit” refers to his body being made alive by the Holy Spirit. Next Doig states:
Second, we must listen to the Egyptian....The only other place in the Bible where the phrase occurs was when David came to Ziklag “on the third day” (1 Samuel 30:1) and found it burnt with fire. An abandoned Egyptian had not eaten or drunk for “three days and three nights.” (30:12) The Egyptian confirmed he was deserted “three days ago.” (30:13). After comforting the Egyptian David and his men pursued the Amalekites and “smote them from the twilight even unto the evening of the [their] next day.” (30:17) It was during the daytime that the Egyptian used the phrase “three days and three nights” and “three days ago” at about the same time with the same meaning, part of a day being as the whole. “Three days and three nights” was not literal.
Doig reduces three days and three nights to three days and two nights here, and puts the Egyptian’s falling sick in the daytime, and his recovery in the daytime. But has he listened to the Egyptian here? No not at all. Firstly, Egyptians count days from sunrise just as David and his men did. 1 Samuel 30:13 allows that the Egyptian had been sick longer than three days, but he had been abandoned for three days. This means that at daybreak he was abandoned when the Amalekites broke camp. The Amalekites, however, did not go far, and this means that the Egyptian was simply left not too far away to die, because his master doubtless had plenty of other loot and captives, and they wanted to take a break to feast, apparently three days of feasting in some secure valley out of sight. The Amalekite was not too bright to leave living evidence of their whereabouts behind. But the lazy man did not want his servant any more. The Egyptian was discovered at night, probably by David’s picket watch when they could march no more during the night, and after things quieted down the watch discovered the man when he made noise as the dawn approached. He was probably already recovering from being sick, but was too weak to help himself, and needed food and water. The third day was a day and a night, being counted from sunrise, and it was in the third night that he revived. For before the day is done, he leads them to the Amalekite camp. Then David smites them from dawn to dusk of their next day. This is an important clue. Amalek counts days from sunset to sunset. At that time Israel counted days from dawn to dawn, just as the Egyptian. The detail tells us how to count three days and three nights. The third night ended at dawn when the battle began. The battle ended at dusk on the next Amalekite day. The three days and three nights are literal. Doig next remarks:
Fourth, the Jews counted any portion of a day as a whole day. The Talmud makes this clear. "A day and night are an Onah (time period) and the portion of an Onah is as the whole of it." (JT, Shabbat 9:3; BT, Pesahim 4a)
This argument is quoted out of context all the time. Firstly, the Jews never show an example of counting three days and three nights as less then three parts each. And the prime application of the saying is to the length of time that a woman remains unclean because the seed of man in in her. It is clear from the Rabbinic argument that the Rabbis would not even consider three days and two nights as a valid measure of the time period for attaining ritual purity. Doig next remarks:
Later that Sunday daytime on the Road to Emmaus we are told that since His crucifixion, “it is the third day since all this took place.” (Luke 24:21) If Sunday (a partial day) starting at sunset was the third day, then the second day was the Saturday Sabbath (a full day), then the first day was Friday (a partial day).
Again we have a mistranslated text. If it was the third day, then why did the two men make the complaint? Yeshua would have rebuked them for loosing faith before the end of the third day. The text correctly reads:
21And we were hoping that it was he who was about to redeem Israel. But indeed, even with all this, a third day passed today, from when these things happened.
Codex Bezae and other texts read correctly as translated here. The scribes added the word “this” to the other manuscripts, to read “this third day” because they correctly perceived the contradiction in the statement that the third day passed and the Friday to Sunday chronology. For while Sunday may be the third day by their reckoning, it is not the end of a third day from Friday afternoon by anyone’s reckoning.
The third day passed at sunrise on the Sabbath. And therefore, the two men said that the third day had passed by that very day as they sought to leave in a hurry lest they be accused. The remark was made on the 4th day. As I said, the days are counted by sunrise reckoning.
The women with the spices would not have come to the tomb on Sunday if it was the fourth or fifth day after Jesus had died. The fourth day was against Jewish custom, as suggested when Jesus asked the stone be rolled back so he could bring Lazarus to life. Martha warned Him, "by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days." (John 11:39) The women with the spices went to the tomb because it was still the third day.
Of course, this is true. But the women did not go to the tomb on Sunday. They went before sunrise on the Sabbath, during the dawn, while it was still the third day by sunrise reckoning.
Doig credits the Thursday theory for putting the three days and three nights rightly, but he faults the sunrise counting, and this is probably based on his misunderstanding of the differences in how Israel reckoned the day during different epochs. Before AD 70 the Temple services counted days from daybreak to daybreak (sunrise reckoning). The ascending offering burned for a day and a night, and then its ashes were removed (Lev. 6:9-10). Likewise, days in Genesis 1 are timed from day break to day break. Once again the assumption that the Jews may be assumed right in using sunset reckoning for everything is incorrect. But the Scripture teaches that an offering may be eaten for a day and a night, but not after daybreak, and that it must be consumed on the same day that it is offered. This fits only with a day counted from dawn to the next dawn. It is Sabbaths that are exceptional, since they are counted from the sunset of the day before to the sunset of the day following, and only in respect of the Sabbath is the night leading it defined with the seventh day. Doig lists the following:
Day 1 – Friday Day – Death and burial.
Day 2 – Saturday Night (Sabbath and Passover)
Day 2 – Saturday Day (Sabbath and Passover)
Day 3 – Sunday Night – Resurrection, probably before sunrise.
Day 3 – Sunday Day – Women come to tomb, men speak to Jesus on Road to Emmaus.
I have emphasized his suggestion. This would reduce the time period for the Friday to Sunday theory to two days and two nights! It is true that the Scripture places the resurrection before sunrise. The three days and three nights begin on Wednesday at dawn, and end on the weekly Sabbath at sunrise. Before the close of this period Yeshua was risen from the dead. The women went to the tomb at dawn on the Sabbath, and the men went to Emmaus and made their remarks later that day.