How come Jesus died on Friday and rose on Sunday? That's not 3 days and three nights.

 

The only time the day is mentioned in the relevant Scripture is that Jesus was crucified on the Passover and that he was removed and buried “because the next day was a Sabbath” (my paraphrase), then found to have resurrected the first day of the new week.

Here’s where our understanding of the Jewish feasts comes into play.

The Bible states in Luke 23:54 that when Joseph buried Jesus, “…it was the preparation day, and the Sabbath was about to begin.” That would make you think that he was referring to the usual Sabbath on the last day of the week, and then the day after (first day of the week), the disciples found Jesus had risen.

However, there’s an important detail earlier in the account—Jesus, before he was crucified, had celebrated the Passover meal with his disciples (Luke 22:14–23), meaning he was crucified on Passover, on the 14th of Nisan. The seven days after Passover, from the 15th to the 21st of Nisan, is the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and the first and last (seventh) days of the feast are High Sabbaths, and they don’t necessarily fall on the last day of the week (see Leviticus 23).

Therefore, the three days would have begun on the 14th of Nisan (when he was crucified and buried), and his resurrection occurred on the 17th of Nisan, which in that particular Jewish year happened to be the first day of the week (Luke 24:1).

Postscript

By the way, there are few other interesting things that occurred on the 17th of Nisan:

• Noah’s ark comes to rest on the mountains of Ararat after the Great Flood (Genesis 8:4).
• Moses and Israel escape from captivity in Egypt by crossing the Red Sea (Exodus 14).
• The nation of Israel, now under Joshua, enters their promised land (Joshua 5).
• Queen Esther (an Israelite) risks her life by entering the court of King Ahasuerus without leave to plead for her people to be saved and expose Haman’s plot to wipe out the Jews, resulting in the king allowing her people to fight for themselves, resulting in their being saved from extermination (Esther 5).