Page 128 - Advanced Biblical Backgrounds Revised

The Law lays it down that the Sabbath Day is to be kept holy and that on it, no work is to be done. That
is a great principle. But these Jewish legalists had a passion for definition. So they asked: What is work?
All kinds of things were classified as work. For instance, to carry a burden on the Sabbath Day is to work.
But next, a burden has to be defined. So the Scribal Law lays it down that a burden is “food equal in
weight to a dried fig, enough wine for mixing in a goblet, milk enough for one swallow, honey enough to
put upon a wound, oil enough to anoint a small member, water enough to moisten an eye-salve, paper
enough to write a customs house notice upon, ink enough to write two letters of the alphabet, reed
enough to make a pen”—and so on endlessly. So they spent endless hours arguing whether a man could
or could not lift a lamp from one place to another on the Sabbath, whether a tailor committed a sin if he
went out with a needle in his robe, whether a woman might wear a brooch or false hair, even if a man
might go out on the Sabbath with artificial teeth or an artificial limb if a man might lift his child on the
Sabbath Day. These things, to them, were the essence of religion. Their religion was a legalism of petty
rules and regulations. 174

High Sabbath Days

Therefore, because it was the Preparation Day, that the bodies should not remain
on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked
Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away. (John
19:31)

This Sabbath was NOT the same as the weekly Sabbath. A high day is technically an annual holy day, or
annual Sabbath, as commanded in Leviticus 23. Certainly, the weekly Sabbath is a day to keep holy, but
these annual holy days take precedence if they occur on the seventh-day Sabbath.
The annual Sabbaths are seven: the first and seventh days of Unleavened Bread, Pentecost, Trumpets
(Rosh Hashanah in Hebrew), Atonement (Yom Kippur), the first day of Tabernacles (Succoth), and the
Last Great Day. The first three occur in the spring, and the last four in the fall. Thus, the high day of
which John was speaking was one of the three spring holy days, and since Jesus' crucifixion took place
on the day of Passover (Nisan 14 on the Hebrew calendar), the high day of which he speaks must be the
first day of Unleavened Bread, which falls the day after the Passover (Nisan 15).

This verse also provides some very interesting and definitive proof of when Jesus died and thus when He
was resurrected. Jesus Himself said several times that His time in the tomb would be three days and
three nights, just as the prophet Jonah had spent three days and nights in the fish's belly (see Matthew
12:38-40; 27:63; Mark 8:31; John 2:18-22). This in itself rules out a Friday crucifixion-Sunday
resurrection because there is no way to cram three days and three nights between sunset on Friday and
sunrise on Sunday.
If Jesus rose exactly three days and three nights after His burial (just before sunset; see Matthew
27:46; Mark 15:34), the only candidate for His resurrection is the very end of the Sabbath at sunset.
Counting back three full days, then, Jesus must have died on the previous Wednesday, which would
have been the day of the Passover (Jesus and His disciples had observed the Passover the evening
before). The first day of Unleavened Bread began just minutes after Joseph of Arimathea and
Nicodemus sealed His tomb.

174 https://bible.org/seriespage/16-sabbath-controversy-gospels

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