The Gospel of Luke, Chapter 24 - Christogenea on Talkshoe 12-28-2012
While presenting these gospel accounts it has often been said that the perspectives of all four gospel writers are needed in order to be able to piece together a more complete picture of the events surrounding the life, ministry and passion of Christ. That is especially true when trying to determine the chronology of the last week of His pre-Resurrection life and of the Resurrection itself.
The popular perception of the chronology of the death and resurrection of Christ comes from a calendar which was evidently made to suit the Roman church, however it does not agree with the Gospel. From John 19:31 we see of the Sabbath which was also the Passover that “that Sabbath day was an high day”. So we learn that Christ was placed into a tomb at the end of a preparation day for a high Sabbath, and not necessarily the day of the regular seventh-day Sabbath, and that He was in that tomb on a Sabbath day, and that he was found to have been arisen by dawn of the first day of the week, which is the day immediately following a Sabbath day. From three of the four gospels, from Matthew 27:55 and 61, from Mark 15:47, and from Luke 24:1, we see that the women who were with Christ had observed His death and burial right up to where He was placed into the tomb. From all four gospels, from Matthew 28:1, from Mark 16:2, from Luke 23:55 and from John 20:1, we find that the first thing Mary Magdalene and some of the other women did on the day immediately after a Sabbath – even before the sun had risen completely – was to go to the tomb of Christ and find that He had already arisen. If that day were the Passover Sabbath, it seems that they would hardly have had time to go shopping.
However in the opening verses of Mark chapter 16 we read the following: “1 And upon the passing of the Sabbath Maria the Magdalene and Maria the mother of Iakobos and Salome purchased herbs in order that having come they may anoint Him. 2 And very early in the morning on the first day of the week they come to the tomb upon the rising of the sun.” The “passing of the Sabbath” must mean to indicate the passing of the “high day” of John 19:31, which was the Passover itself. The Passover was a Sabbath day – a day of no work or commerce – but it was not the regular Sabbath day of the seven-day Sabbath cycle. So the women did not purchase herbs until the Sabbath had passed, and neither could the women have purchased and prepared the herbs before getting to the tomb before dawn on the “first day of the week”, unless there was an intervening day that the women could use for such a task which was between the “high day” Passover sabbath, and the Sabbath day prior to the “first day of the week” upon which the women had gone to the tomb. For all of the gospel accounts to be correct, there must have been a Passover Sabbath, and then another day, and then a regular seventh-day Sabbath before this morning where the women appear at the tomb to find that Christ was already risen.