Jesus

I may not be the right person to tackle this issue but I would like to enlighten this discussion by citing some references online. There has been a long standing debate over the meaning of Matthew 12:40, “for just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” In my opinion, the evidence supports the traditional view that Jesus was crucified on Friday afternoon and was in the grave part of Friday (It was the day of Preparation, and the Sabbath was beginning. The women who had come with him from Galilee followed, and they saw the tomb and how his body was laid.) (Luke 23:54-55), all of Saturday (Then they went home and prepared spices and perfumes. But they rested on the Sabbath in obedience to the commandment.) (Luke 23:56), and part of Sunday, the first day of the week(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 24:1). Some of the evidence for this is as follows: 1. “the day of preparation” (Luke 23:54) could only refer to Friday before the Sabbath since no work of any kind could be done on the Sabbath, the seventh day. On other Sabbaths, holy days, domestic work could be done like making fire and cooking. No special preparation was needed for those Sabbaths or holy days, but not so on “the High Sabbath.” We might also note that the “day of preparation,” the Greek paraskeue, means Friday in modern Greek. The point here is that Friday is the only day a preparation day was needed as a preparation for the Sabbath, our Saturday. 2. Comparing all that is said in Luke 23:54-24:1 and John 19:31- "Now it was the day of Preparation, and the next day was to be a special Sabbath. Because the Jews did not want the bodies left on the crosses during the Sabbath, they asked Pilate to have the legs broken and the bodies taken down." , settles the issue because of the day of preparation, Friday, being needed to prepare for a special high day or high Sabbath along with the fact the women came to the tomb on Sunday morning which is described as the third day. It is probably significant that “Every occurrence of the ‘the third day’ with reference to Jesus’ resurrection in the Gospels is put in the dat. (dative case) without an accompanying preposition” (Dan Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basic, Zondervan, p. 156). The significance of this is that nouns used in the dative case like “the third day” express a point in time rather than duration of time. So it means, “at a point in time, on the third day.” Soure: http://www.bible.org/qa.php?qa_id=168&topic_id=77