Great points! Was going to say "100%", but you slipped in one overcompensation that 7th-day resters often fall prey to, namely the "Wednesday crucifixion". I looked seriously at it for some time, but there is actually "strong scriptural evidence" that Jesus did in fact die on the sixth day and rose on the eighth day, and that the other timetable is special pleading. What happened was that the 7th-day folks didn't think they had enough ammo as is (but they do), and so they cast about for more, and they came up with the idea that Jesus must have risen on the 7th day even though it's against the plain reading of the text, and then combined that with the idea that the ancients didn't count inclusively just because we generally don't. Then everything else was patched in to support the Wednesday story.
I won't lay out all the lines right now, but suffice that at the same time Moses gave us Sabbath he also set aside a special purpose for "the day after Sabbath". Namely, twice a year it is the beginning of a work season at Firstfruits and at Weeks (Pentecost). For 1500 years Israel celebrated the first day twice a year alongside Sabbath, and these are exactly the two occasions in 33 AD that testify of Jesus rising and the Spirit coming (now called Resurrection Day, or "Easter", and Pentecost). So it'd be a bit silly for Jesus to rise on Saturday when the whole point of Firstfruits in Lev. 23 is that it begins the week and also points to a greater beginning of a week 50 days later, which the Spirit also kept.
I have never seen a 7th-day rester deny that Christian Pentecost fell on the 1st day; they just tend to ignore that, and that's because in the 19th century they found it convenient to continue a church distinction between the Ten Words and all other laws. It's been their bit ever since, and a very good one, to call out the rest of the church for keeping all the Ten Words except the Sabbath. All they need is to take this to its logical extension, and some of the 7th-day people discovered this and rightly called them to greater holiness, like Andrew Dugger. So the witness of the 7th day is only improved by admitting 1st-day Pentecost, and that logically removes the necessity of leaning on a crutch of Wednesday crucifixion.
I studied this some years ago and put together this table that you may be interested in. It shows how I believe Jesus was crucified on the 4th day of the week and rose again on the seventh day before sunset: https://imgur.com/xuyMrUJ
“For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” (Matthew 12:40)
In the churches I've been in we have people of both positions accepting each other and sharing details. I've looked into those details but I find that they primarily come from difficulty understanding the Bible's wide use of inclusive counting, and difficulty understanding the Bible's use of the first day of the week as a Mosaic type. Then the whole interpretation is constructed around those difficulties as if it doesn't create more problems.
Some samples, just picking from your chart: (1) No blood moon in 31, but there was one in 33 via lunar eclipse (Acts 2:16-21); (2) No typological 10 Nisan entry represented by the inspection of the lamb because 10 Nisan would be on Sabbath, not a journeying day (Ex. 12:3); (3) No evidence that "preparation" was a term for a day before an annual rest day, because there was no food prep on such days but only before Sabbath (Ex. 16:5); (4) The holy convocation of 15 Nisan is not called "Sabbath" or "Sabbatical" anywhere, only "miqra" (assembly, Lev. 23:7); (5) Modern translations select the past rather than the perfect to translate the aorist in Mark 16:1, while KJV uses perfect tense to indicate the reading compatible with the 6th-day crucifixion and all other verses: "When the sabbath was past, [they] had bought sweet spices", i.e., at the end of Sabbath they had already bought them.
That brings us to the many lines of argument that "three days and three nights" is not to be taken as it reads in literal English. First, in literal English it is incompatible with the more-frequent phrase "on the third day"; the position ignores all these and their similarities. Second, David also uses "on the third day" interchangeably with "three days agone" and "three days and three nights", 1 Sam. 30:1, 12-13. Third, several narratives demonstrate that a three-day cycle was a common narrative framing and "third day" was synonymous with what we call "day after tomorrow". Fourth, this agrees with every other evidence of inclusive counting demonstrated in the Bible and Near East literature generically. I have several more points in the files.
So if one is willing to respect all the texts I believe one is gradually weaned of the Wednesday theory. I took time to consider it and on occasions favored it a bit, but I realized it introduces far more inconsistencies than it resolves. Thanks for listening!
Well, I appreciate your listening. What's more important is that 7th-day resters stick together, which is what I've been able to do in congregations where this question remained unsettled.
Great points! Was going to say "100%", but you slipped in one overcompensation that 7th-day resters often fall prey to, namely the "Wednesday crucifixion". I looked seriously at it for some time, but there is actually "strong scriptural evidence" that Jesus did in fact die on the sixth day and rose on the eighth day, and that the other timetable is special pleading. What happened was that the 7th-day folks didn't think they had enough ammo as is (but they do), and so they cast about for more, and they came up with the idea that Jesus must have risen on the 7th day even though it's against the plain reading of the text, and then combined that with the idea that the ancients didn't count inclusively just because we generally don't. Then everything else was patched in to support the Wednesday story.
I won't lay out all the lines right now, but suffice that at the same time Moses gave us Sabbath he also set aside a special purpose for "the day after Sabbath". Namely, twice a year it is the beginning of a work season at Firstfruits and at Weeks (Pentecost). For 1500 years Israel celebrated the first day twice a year alongside Sabbath, and these are exactly the two occasions in 33 AD that testify of Jesus rising and the Spirit coming (now called Resurrection Day, or "Easter", and Pentecost). So it'd be a bit silly for Jesus to rise on Saturday when the whole point of Firstfruits in Lev. 23 is that it begins the week and also points to a greater beginning of a week 50 days later, which the Spirit also kept.
I have never seen a 7th-day rester deny that Christian Pentecost fell on the 1st day; they just tend to ignore that, and that's because in the 19th century they found it convenient to continue a church distinction between the Ten Words and all other laws. It's been their bit ever since, and a very good one, to call out the rest of the church for keeping all the Ten Words except the Sabbath. All they need is to take this to its logical extension, and some of the 7th-day people discovered this and rightly called them to greater holiness, like Andrew Dugger. So the witness of the 7th day is only improved by admitting 1st-day Pentecost, and that logically removes the necessity of leaning on a crutch of Wednesday crucifixion.
Chronology link.
I studied this some years ago and put together this table that you may be interested in. It shows how I believe Jesus was crucified on the 4th day of the week and rose again on the seventh day before sunset: https://imgur.com/xuyMrUJ
“For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” (Matthew 12:40)
In the churches I've been in we have people of both positions accepting each other and sharing details. I've looked into those details but I find that they primarily come from difficulty understanding the Bible's wide use of inclusive counting, and difficulty understanding the Bible's use of the first day of the week as a Mosaic type. Then the whole interpretation is constructed around those difficulties as if it doesn't create more problems.
Some samples, just picking from your chart: (1) No blood moon in 31, but there was one in 33 via lunar eclipse (Acts 2:16-21); (2) No typological 10 Nisan entry represented by the inspection of the lamb because 10 Nisan would be on Sabbath, not a journeying day (Ex. 12:3); (3) No evidence that "preparation" was a term for a day before an annual rest day, because there was no food prep on such days but only before Sabbath (Ex. 16:5); (4) The holy convocation of 15 Nisan is not called "Sabbath" or "Sabbatical" anywhere, only "miqra" (assembly, Lev. 23:7); (5) Modern translations select the past rather than the perfect to translate the aorist in Mark 16:1, while KJV uses perfect tense to indicate the reading compatible with the 6th-day crucifixion and all other verses: "When the sabbath was past, [they] had bought sweet spices", i.e., at the end of Sabbath they had already bought them.
That brings us to the many lines of argument that "three days and three nights" is not to be taken as it reads in literal English. First, in literal English it is incompatible with the more-frequent phrase "on the third day"; the position ignores all these and their similarities. Second, David also uses "on the third day" interchangeably with "three days agone" and "three days and three nights", 1 Sam. 30:1, 12-13. Third, several narratives demonstrate that a three-day cycle was a common narrative framing and "third day" was synonymous with what we call "day after tomorrow". Fourth, this agrees with every other evidence of inclusive counting demonstrated in the Bible and Near East literature generically. I have several more points in the files.
So if one is willing to respect all the texts I believe one is gradually weaned of the Wednesday theory. I took time to consider it and on occasions favored it a bit, but I realized it introduces far more inconsistencies than it resolves. Thanks for listening!
SwampRangers, I respectfully disagree, but I’ll leave it there.
Well, I appreciate your listening. What's more important is that 7th-day resters stick together, which is what I've been able to do in congregations where this question remained unsettled.