Actually

In Which I Correct Some Online Pedants For A Hot Minute

File: Jaël die Sisera doodt Jaël doodt Sisera, RP-T-1930-8.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

First of all, super sorry not to have gotten to a live stream yesterday. We grabbed a moment to celebrate the birthday of one of the children, who is, in fact, not a child anymore, being now officially 21. We’ve arrived at that stage in life where it is impossible to get everyone all in the same room for important occasions, even for five or ten minutes, without pushing out for weeks to come. But seriously, I can’t believe how old *I* am to have such old children.

Second of all, I was grieved to see some of the pictures of the firebombed governor’s mansion in Pensylvania. The perpetrator, it is being reported, got in while they were sleeping and was there for only a minute, and yet managed to wreck everything. And, from what I read, it was Passover weekend. So appalling.

It seems that, as usual, death and violence are the order of the day—helicopter and plane crashes, murder, hatred, vicious anger, and other kinds of evil. I sure can’t wait for humanity to progress towards becoming their better selves any day now. Total Depravity, on this, the third day of Holy Week, remains the undefeated champion.

Total Depravity with a heaping measure of Theological Pedantry on the side. I was amused to come across an account on X called KJV Churches (@kjvchurches). Whoever is running that account tweeted this:

Just a reminder, you can’t get three days and three nights from Friday to Sunday.

Can’t you? I wondered, as I began, with relish, to scroll. Someone called Harpazo responded:

Jesus Christ was crucified on a Friday, according to Scripture. "The Jews therefore, because it was the preparation, that the bodies should not remain upon the cross on the sabbath day, (for that sabbath day was an high day,)..." John 19:31 KJV

To which KJV Churches reposted:

It was a special high sabbath, not the weekly sabbath. Jesus was crucified on Wednesday.

Then Isaac the Baptist came in with a cool red X mark:

You are also wrong. Jesus was crucified on Thursday. Wednesday to Sunday is 4 days and 4 nights

Back to KJV Churches:

Wednesday 6pm to Thursday 6pm = 1d/1n

Thursday 6pm to Friday 6pm = 1d/1n

Friday 6pm to Saturday 6pm = 1d/1n

Buried at 6pm Wednesday, arose Saturday at 6pm.

Three days, three nights, exactly as He said.

Then someone, can’t remember who, worked out the logic some more:

Jesus died 3pm. First day: Thursday and night. Second: Friday day and night, Third: Saturday day and night. Proof:

1. Jesus died during the day and not 6pm and the burial time means nothing and was for sure before end of the day. Mark 15:34-37 (NKJV) And at the ninth hour... And Jesus cried out with a loud voice, and breathed His last.

2. Jesus Resurected on Sunday morning and infering he resurected Saturday evening is unscriptural and scripture gymnastics. Luke 24:1-6 (NKJV) Now on the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they... came to the tomb bringing the spices... 6 He is not here, but is risen!

3. The 2 desiples going to emaus believed Sunday was third day since his death. No amount of scripture twisting can justify this to be counted from Wednesday 1. Luke 24:21-23 (NKJV) But we were hoping that it was He who was going to redeem Israel. Indeed, besides all this, today is the third day since these things happened.

Finally, a person called Christopher Cervantes offered this salient point:

The phrase “three days and three nights” in Matthew 12:40 is best understood as a Hebrew idiom for any part of three days. We see this throughout Scripture. In 1 Samuel 30:12–13, the Egyptian servant had not eaten “for three days and three nights,” and yet in the next verse, he says his illness began “three days ago.” The same pattern appears in Esther 4:16 and 5:1, where a “three days and nights” fast ends on the third day. So biblically, “three days and three nights” does not require 72 literal hours. It was an idiomatic way of referring to a period that touched on three calendar days.

To which KJV Churches said this:

You have not shown where Jesus meant an idiom. He said three days and three nights, therefore I accept that He meant three days and three nights, 72 hours. Either He meant what He said, or we can twist His words to mean whatever we want. I’m going with the former.

So, that sure is one way of reading the Bible, where you are completely unteachable and unable to countenance the thoughts and reasoning of other cultures, including the one in which God decided to incarnate himself. This is like those people who won’t wear wedding rings because of what Paul says about not adorning yourself with gold and suchlike. Or the people who can’t figure out what day to go to church on. Or the people who don’t know what to do when they get to church. Or the “pisseth against the wall” guy.

Swinging wildly the other way, with everything going on in the world, and people desperately needing to hear the good news of Christ’s death and resurrection, because they are all quite literally perishing, Christianity Today got in someone to ponder whether or not Jesus was “nailed” to the cross:

Closely reading the Bible, looking at the long historical record of Roman crucifixion, and examining the archaeological evidence, García has come to the conclusion that the Crucifixion might have been done with ropes. While Christians from Emperor Constantine’s mother to documentary filmmakers today have searched for relics of the “true nails” and many have meditated on the iron piercing flesh, the nails might just be the stuff of legend.

Garcia is described as an “Evangelical Bible scholar.”

“I don’t stand and say this, definitively, is how it happened,” García told CT. “I basically find it interesting. It could be there were nails, or it could be that there weren’t nails.”

In fact, you guys:

Scour the ancient texts on crucifixion, as García has done, and there are a few nails to be found. Nails from crosses are listed as ingredients for a magic potion, along with locust eggs and fox teeth. And there’s a law recorded in a port city that says the government will crucify enslaved people at their masters’ request, but the masters must provide the supplies. The list of hardware needed for crucifixion includes nails, along with wood, rope, chains, and pitch, which was used to burn the person being tortured.

Seriously, you guys:

Nails were not required to kill someone in a crucifixion. Death came through suffocation, caused by suspension. Ropes would work for that.

Except that Jesus didn’t die from those things, remember. He commended his spirit to the Father and died because it was time for him to die.

A crucifixion with ropes would still be incredibly painful and bloody. Victims were almost invariably whipped before being crucified, and when Romans mentioned the blood, as the politician Cicero did when complaining that a citizen was improperly crucified in one of the provinces, they talked about the scourging.

But what about Thomas wanting to put his finger in the nail marks of the Lord? What about that?

Maybe that’s proof that Christ was crucified with nails, García said. But he isn’t completely convinced. Jesus doesn’t explicitly say “nails,” and the Bible does not say Thomas touches Christ’s hands or his feet. Many scholars think John was written later—perhaps after crucifixion with nails had become more common, García said. And the point of the gospel passage, the Gordon professor points out, is that followers of the resurrected Christ shouldn’t actually need nail holes to affirm their faith. “Blessed are those who have not seen,” Jesus says, “and yet have believed” (v. 29).

See, the Gospel according to John, many scholars think, was “written later.” Still:

García told CT he is not going to forbid anyone from imagining nails in Jesus’ hands and feet. When the topic comes up in class, he tells students it would be silly to start protesting historic Christian paintings or fact-checking contemporary worship songs. But he does encourage them to question tradition and what they think they know about Christ’s death and check it against Scripture. “The most important thing for me is that we read the text,” García said. “And then there is a world lying behind the text—but it takes some work for us as moderns to get to the point where we know something about that world, and for me, that deepens, that broadens and focuses how you read the text, how you understand it.”

So, just picking up my metaphorical tent peg and beginning to thwack wildly in every direction, let me just say that which is already abundantly obvious.

One, it matters what the Bible says. Bible scholarship is necessary and real, and you can’t just make stuff up, and if you don’t understand, you should work a little bit harder because you are not the measure and arbiter of the Truth. It does matter that Jesus keeps his word because if he didn’t tell the truth about himself, then he isn’t God, and we aren’t saved.

Two, the Bible is not only written by human authors but also by the divine one, so if John reports that Thomas wanted to put his finger into the marks in Jesus’ hands, you don’t need to wander around the ancient world looking for the actual nails that were put in his hands. John—and the Holy Spirit—knew whereof they were speaking. Also, you might remember, but there are a lot of moments in the Old Testament that foreshadow the use of nails, like the picture at the top of this post.

Three, it’s fun, of course, to work out the pedantic details of all the bits of the Bible, especially those that are so central to our faith, like Jesus dying on the cross. But if you find yourself a lot more hopped up about the nails and screeching online about Jesus having to die on Wednesday or Thursday because your tiny Western mind can’t cope with other kinds of information, you are, as they say, missing the forest for the trees, some of which abroreal constructs are actually imaginary.

Why did Jesus die? Because we are bad people and we needed saving. Everything we do is tainted by sin. No matter how hard we struggle and strive, we are bound by cords of death going down into Sheol. We have to be pulled up out of the pit. Someone strong enough and loving enough had to be willing to do it.

Contemplating the mighty acts of God to redeem the world includes looking at the details of the week, the things Jesus did and said, but it also means looking at yourself, trying to peel back the layers of pride and hubris and plum stupidity and asking God to turn his mighty arm and outstreched hand, his love and mercy to your own heart and mind. That, it turns out, is much harder than trying to figure out why it’s ok that Jesus could die on Friday and rise on Sunday—because he didn’t need 72 hours you numbskull.

Ok, so, I gotta run. The Easter Flowers aren’t going to buy themselves. Have a nice day!