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Author | Topic: Matthew 12:40 Using Common Idiomatic Language? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Faith ![]() Suspended Member (Idle past 1770 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Since we do not have even a portion of a third night the main problem is unsolved. But it is solved: when the rabbi says that "A day and a night make a whole day" according to the idiom. That is, the night is included in the day, so insisting that the nights be counted separately misses the gist of the idiom: they are part of the day and don't have to be in the picture at all since a day is a day with or without them. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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PaulK Member Posts: 18061 Joined: Member Rating: 5.0 |
quote: You assume too much. That's not an idiom, that's just normal usage in English as well. A whole day - 24 hours - includes a day and a night. It's just rounding up. If you're talking about whole days you round up to a whole day. If you're talking about days and nights you wouldn't - and the Rabbi doesn't say that he would either.
quote: Three days and three nights would seem to be counting the nights separately. That IS the issue.
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Faith ![]() Suspended Member (Idle past 1770 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
The rabbi clearly meant what I said he meant.
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PaulK Member Posts: 18061 Joined: Member Rating: 5.0 |
Even your commentary says that you need portions of three nights to get three days and three nights.
It is not clear or even likely that he meant that the "three days and three nights" can be reasonably read as "one whole day and small parts of two more and two nights"
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rstrats Member Posts: 140 Joined: |
kbertsche,
re: "Please go back and re-read my post #3. As I said there, the evidence SUGGESTS that this is an idiom. It does not PROVE that this is an idiom..." OK, let me try to clarify the topic request: 1. The Messiah said that 3 nights would be involved with His time in the "heart of the earth". 2. There are some folks 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, some think that the "heart of the earth" refers to the tomb, 4. However, a 6th day of the week crucifixion/1st day of the week resurrection allows for only 2 nights to be involved. 5. To account for the lack of a 3rd night, some of the folks mentioned in the 3rd point say that the Messiah was using common figure of speech/colloquial language of the time. 6. If it was common usage to 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 occur, examples would have to be known in order to legitimately say that is was common. 7. I am simply asking for some of those examples, i.e., actual instances where a daytime or a night time was said to be involved with an event when no part of the daytime or no part of the night time could have occurred.
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rstrats Member Posts: 140 Joined: |
Faith,
re: " Rabbi Eleazar ben Azariah (around the year ad 100; cited in Clarke and other sources) explained this way of speaking when he wrote: 'A day and a night make a whole day, and a portion of a whole day is reckoned as a whole day.' As regards the Jewish practice of counting any part of a calendar day as a whole calendar day I would agree, but when "nights" is added to "days" to yield the phrase "X days AND X nights" it normally refers to a measurement of a time period where "day" refers to the light portion of a 24 hour period and "night"refers to the dark portion of a 24 hour period. No one In the history of apologetics as far as I know has ever presented any historical documentation that the phrase X days AND X nights was a unique first century idiom of Hebrew/Aramaic/Greek which could mean something different than what the phrase means in English. Azariah's interpretation of the meaning of the phrase, "A day and a night make an Onah, and a part of an Onah is as the whole" doesn't seem to make sense. On the one hand he is saying that a day AND a night define an Onah and then he turns right around and says that a day OR a night define an Onah. What makes more sense is that the rabbi is saying that a day is an Onah and a night is an Onah but that any part of a day can be counted as a whole day and any part of a night can be counted as a whole night. And that interpretation is supported by Rabbi Ismael, Rabbi Jochanan, and Rabbi Akiba, contemporaries of Azariah, who all agree that an onah was 12 hours long, either a day OR a night. "Commentary on the New Testament from the Talmud and Hebraica". Also, a definition of Onah from "The Jerusalem Center for Advanced Torah Study" says: "The word onah literally means 'time period.' In the context of the laws of niddah, it usually refers to a day or a night. Each 24-hour day thus consists of two onot. The daytime onah begins at sunrise (henetz hachamah, commonly called netz) and ends at sunset (shekiat hachamah or shekiah). The night-time onah lasts from sunset until sunrise."
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kbertsche Member (Idle past 2457 days) Posts: 1427 From: San Jose, CA, USA Joined:
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rstrats writes:
I haven't been able to find any example which EXACTLY, DEFINITIVELY shows what you ask. Perhaps examples exist in Rabinnic or Greek literature, and perhaps not. I am not enough of a Greek or Hebrew scholar to say for sure. I am simply asking for some of those examples, i.e., actual instances where a daytime or a night time was said to be involved with an event when no part of the daytime or no part of the night time could have occurred. What I DID find and present to you is evidence:1) that first century Jews thought and spoke about time differently than we do, and 2) that "three days and three nights" is synonymous for "the third day" (i.e. two days from now). Matthew himself uses both phrases interchangeably without noting a contradiction (the former in Mt. 12:40; the latter in 16:21; 17:23; and 20:19.) From Mt 27:57—28:1 it seems that this refers to a period of less than 48 hours. "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." — Albert Einstein I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is very deficient. It gives us a lot of factual information, puts all of our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously. — Erwin Schroedinger
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Faith ![]() Suspended Member (Idle past 1770 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Even your commentary says that you need portions of three nights to get three days and three nights. It is not clear or even likely that he meant that the "three days and three nights" can be reasonably read as "one whole day and small parts of two more and two nights" I think it clearly refers to three "days" in which nights may or may not be a portion.
BLB Commentary writes: Rabbi Eleazar ben Azariah (around the year ad 100; cited in Clarke and other sources) explained this way of speaking when he wrote: A day and a night make a whole day, and a portion of a whole day is reckond as a whole day. "A portion of a whole day is reckoned as a whole day" saying nothing about whether that portion includes any night time at all.
BLB commentary writes: This demonstrates how in Jesus’ day, the phrase three days and three nights did not necessarily mean a full 72-hour period, but a period including at least the portions of three days and three nights. Reading this in the light of the statement above the meaning is NOT that any portion of actual night time is necessary in referring to a day. It is ambiguously worded but that's because it's stating the idiom itself, not because it is now contradicting the statement just before it about reckoning a portion of a day, defined as a day and a night, night being regarded as part of the whole day. Night is subsumed under day, part of day, the day is the whole that includes night but since any portion is counted as a day that portion does not have to include night. You apparently aren't going to accept this and I don't know why but I think you are clearly wrong and there is no need for any part of night to be included in a particular "day." Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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PaulK Member Posts: 18061 Joined: Member Rating: 5.0 |
quote: We're discussing the phrase "three days and three nights" so that is obviously not relevant.
quote: And nobody is saying otherwise.
quote: I did explicitly accept it, so this is just standard "Christian" misrepresentation.
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Faith ![]() Suspended Member (Idle past 1770 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
.. but when "nights" is added to "days" to yield the phrase "X days AND X nights" it normally refers to a measurement of a time period where "day" refers to the light portion of a 24 hour period and "night"refers to the dark portion of a 24 hour period. But I think that is a distinction WE make that they didn't make, and that the rabbi's explanation is that night is subsumed under day in a way that you can have a whole day without including any night time at all.
Azariah's interpretation of the meaning of the phrase, "A day and a night make an Onah, and a part of an Onah is as the whole" doesn't seem to make sense. On the one hand he is saying that a day AND a night define an Onah and then he turns right around and says that a day OR a night define an Onah. What makes more sense is that the rabbi is saying that a day is an Onah and a night is an Onah but that any part of a day can be counted as a whole day and any part of a night can be counted as a whole night. And that interpretation is supported by Rabbi Ismael, Rabbi Jochanan, and Rabbi Akiba, contemporaries of Azariah, who all agree that an onah was 12 hours long, either a day OR a night. "Commentary on the New Testament from the Talmud and Hebraica". Also, a definition of Onah from "The Jerusalem Center for Advanced Torah Study" says: "The word onah literally means 'time period.' In the context of the laws of niddah, it usually refers to a day or a night. Each 24-hour day thus consists of two onot. The daytime onah begins at sunrise (henetz hachamah, commonly called netz) and ends at sunset (shekiat hachamah or shekiah). The night-time onah lasts from sunset until sunrise." Well, let the rabbis hash it out then. I think Azariah's version does make more sense: calling a "night and a day" a whole day in which night is subsumed in a way that means you can call a time period a "day and a night" meaning a whole day, but without there being any actual night as part of it. Jesus died within a few hours of sunset on Good Friday which would be the beginning of Saturday in the Jewish system, yet that day is reckoned as a whole day though it is only a few hours and there is no night at all included. Saturday then happens to be a full 24 hour day with a full daylight and a full darkness of night, but then Sunday includes the night but only a few hours of daylight and it too is referred to as a whole day. All three completely different time periods are rightly referred to as a "night and a day" meaning a whole day in Jewish reckoning as Azariah explains it. One hour of daylight can be a "day and a night" and so presumably could one hour of night time. So I'd go with Azariah's interpretation just because it gives consistency to the New Testament usage. But if you disagree I'm no scholar of these things and I've given my view of how it reads to me so there's really no more to say. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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Faith ![]() Suspended Member (Idle past 1770 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
I thought you were disagreeing with me, but if not I'm sorry for the mistake.
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PaulK Member Posts: 18061 Joined: Member Rating: 5.0 |
I'm disagreeing with the idea that the phrase "three days and three nights" can mean a time period that only includes two nights and not even a part of a third. That should have been absolutely clear. But that is not a point you addressed at all in your previous reply to me.
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Faith ![]() Suspended Member (Idle past 1770 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Sorry, I thought I did. As I understand Rabbi Azariah's interpretation, no portion of a night is necessary at all in the phrase "a day and a night" meaning "a whole day."
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PaulK Member Posts: 18061 Joined: Member Rating: 5.0 |
quote: Let us note that the Rabbi does not say that you can round up to a whole day and then call the period "a day and a night" (you wouldn't in English even though everything in the quote also applies to English). And even if he did the plural usage would be "three days and nights", not "three days and three nights". And, as I have pointed out twice already, the commentary explicitly states that you would need at least portions of three nights.
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Faith ![]() Suspended Member (Idle past 1770 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Well, as I have explained, I disagree.
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