It is “Holy Saturday” following “Good Friday,” previously discussed, of “Holy Week.”
When Jesus was on the cross yesterday, Friday, things were quite busy. The bible reports that various people visited him while hanging; the soldiers who nailed him gambled for his clothes (this part was the inspiration for the novel and movie “The Robe”); Jesus prayed to his Father God, one of the three co-equals of the Trinity, to make the whole thing go away, and then realized that what he was praying was inappropriate because what Father God’s wanted controlled. When Jesus died, there were great and unusual weather and seismological abnormalities; the veil of the temple was torn from top to bottom (there are lots of theological explanations for this—none of them making any sense); he was offered “water and wine,” which he refused. A soldier stabbed a spear into his side to make sure he was dead.
Most curiously, when Jesus died, dead people were reported to have come out of their graves or tombs and walk around where they were seen and recognized by “many.’ We are not told the state of decomposition of these zombies. One would think that dead people walking around and being recognized by many would be a lively topic for reporting, and retelling down the years, but sadly there is no record of this incredible event outside of the bible. We might wonder if the animated corpses got their property back from their heirs. Don’t know the law on that one.
Jesus was said to have been buried in a “new tomb,” and a stone was rolled in front of the opening. It is memorialized that soldiers were stationed to guard the tomb. The various reports, from the four gospels, are wildly contradictory.
Lots of other things happened that Saturday. Check the Gospels for details. Sabbath ended at sundown on Saturday.
Jesus spent the entire day being dead in the tomb—so far as we know that is. This is the only full day Jesus was in the tomb. Just how he could have been in the tomb, as prophesied, for “three days and nights” when the reports of scripture say he was entombed from Friday afternoon to Sunday morning, is another of those mysteries of faith.
Big day tomorrow.
Edwin
Edwin Kagin ©2012.
I’m almost inspired to write a screenplay for an entertaining Easter movie instead of the boring preachy crap that’s out there.
“Passion of the Zombies” will begin at The Last Supper, where the ritual cannibalism creates bad things that 5 minutes into the movie during the crucifixion cause the dead to rise. The next hour and a half would be the standard gorefest. The movie would end with the head zombie escaping to Rome where he becomes the first pope.
And it’s all (pretty much) biblical.
Friday night
Saturday day
Saturday night
Three days and nights. Easy.
Beside he wasn’t dead he was only mostly dead. Big difference.