Disproving The Resurrection By The Maximal Facts Approach

[Randy Carson]

You do realize that Jesus rose on the morning of the third day, so that falls well within your 24-72 hour period....

If he did, then Jesus was a lousy prophet, since he told his disciples that he would rise 'after three days'.  He goes even farther in Matthew 12:40, in which he says he will be 'three days and three nights in the belly of the earth'.

Ah, I see where your misunderstanding occurs. The expression "three days and "three nights" is an idiomatic expression...kinda like saying "it's raining cats and dogs". Jimmy Akin writes:

"The expression “three days and three nights” is simply a slightly hyperbolic way of referring to “three days.” As Protestant Bible scholar R. T. France notes:

” Three days and three nights was a Jewish idiom to a period covering only two nights (see myJesus and the Old Testament, p. 81, n. 2)” (Matthew, p. 213).

Similarly, D. A. Carson, regarded as one of the deans of conservative Protestant Bible exegesis, notes:

“In rabbinical thought a day and a night make an onah, and a part of an onah, is as the whole (cf. Strach and Billerbeck: Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch, 1:649, for references; cf. further 1 Sam 30:12-13, 2 Chron 10:5, 12, Esth 4:16, 5:1). Thus according to Jewish tradition, ‘three days and three nights’ need mean no more than ‘three days’ or the combination of any part of three separate days” (Expositor’s Bible Commentary, vol. 8, p. 296).

The fact that this is the mode of speech being used is confirmed in the gospels by several facts."

You can read those facts here.