Numbers are significant. If you are one of those people who are interested in numerology this discussion may take you in a direction you may not have guessed. First, let me say that numbers do have significance. Sometimes we give them more significance than they deserve---or the wrong kind of significance. Other times we do not give numbers the significance they deserve.
How many days was Jesus in the tomb before His resurrection? For some this is a no-brainer. For others it’s a ridiculous question. “Three!” comes the answer from some quarters. “None!” comes the answer from another quarter. The “Three’s” take a literal, or common sense, reading of the text of Scripture. “Three means three,” they say. The “None’s” take a different tack. They’ll tell you that science proves that really dead people do not come back to life. For those Christians and professing followers of Christ who believe in the resurrection, all assume that the text, correctly read, spells it out: Jesus was in the tomb for three days. Why do they say this? A number of reasons. First, that’s what Jesus promised referencing the “sign of Jonah” in Matthew 12:38-45, during His confrontation with the Pharisees. Second, that’s what the New Testament teaches. The number ‘three’ is not a metaphor for something else. Three means three. For those who do not think the resurrection is central or important to the faith I refer you to a careful reading of 1 Corinthians 15:12-19, where Paul writes that if there is no resurrection the Christian faith is in vain and we are to be pitied above all people.
How many days was Jonah in the belly of the fish? Some will answer “Three days!” Others will answer “None!” The “None’s!” say this because science has proven that a fish cannot swallow a person and that person survive (has that been proven?). However, the believer would say three days because that what was recorded in the Bible. A believer would likely argue that the Christ (God the Son) referred to this event as historical and pointed to its relation to His own resurrection (i.e. the sign of Jonah). Christ Jesus would be in the earth for three days. Three days means three days.
How many days did Joshua march around Jericho during Israel’s invasion of Canaan? Christians answer “Seven days!” Once again, there are those who do not believe in miracles. They do not hold to the supernatural. Therefore, they would dispute that God caused the walls of Jericho to collapse. Nevertheless, the length of Joshua’s march is described as seven days in the Bible. There’s nothing miraculous about marching. Seven days is seven days.
Do our numbers “add up?” Christians who see these numbers almost take them for granted. But should they? For example, how do we know that Christ isn’t still in the grave somewhere because three days really means 300,000 years? 300, 000 years isn’t over (yet). Maybe three days meant 3 million years. Maybe three days means three generations. After all the Bible is full of symbolism.
And Jonah: what if three days really meant three seconds, or three minutes, or three hours. Suppose the writer of Jonah was just employing hyperbole (exaggeration) as a literary device. Maybe Jonah, writing from his own point of view, stated ‘three days’ because it only seemed like three days. And what if the seven days of marching around the walls of Jericho was seven years. Seven years of marching was what it was required to wear a rut in the roads so deep that they tunneled under the walls at the deepest spot? Or maybe they walked around the walls for 70 years and wore a really deep rut. At no point are “days” (whether 3 or 7) adequately defined within these texts. Where does it say or imply literal days?
The only place that is says solar “days,” or defines “days,” is the Genesis account of creation. In Genesis chapter 1 we read: “and there was evening and there was morning, the first day… a second day… a third day… a fourth day… a fifth day… a sixth day, etc… Funny, “the first day” stands out from the others because of the employment of the definite article “the.” Unlike the previously listed accounts the meaning of "day" is clearly defined (evening, then morning). Even unbelieving Old Testament scholars who were Hebrew language experts contend that ‘day means day’ in the Genesis accounts (they usually add the caveat that they do not take the Bible seriously). My “Old Earth” friends in the faith insist that science proves that God did not create the universe in 6 days. Really? Like science ‘knows’ that Jesus’ resurrection was impossible? Like science knows that Jonah was not swallowed by a fish? Were the scientists there?
It’s embarrassing? Some tell us that our holding to a 6 day literal creation, as described in the Genesis narrative, will keep people from taking us seriously. The theologians Friedrich Schleiermacher and Rudolph Bultmann said the same thing arguing for deleting miracles from the Bible. Thomas Jefferson removed all miracles from his personal Bible. Should we follow suit?
What’s the big deal? What’s the harm in accommodating the culture? Think it through. If Genesis is symbolic then this calls into question Christ’s atonement for our sin on the Cross and even Christ’s deity. No Adam and Eve, no original sin. No original sin: no need for a Savior and God’s promise in Genesis 3:15 becomes superfluous. Then there’s Jesus’ faulty theology and imperfect understanding of history:
Now when Jesus had finished these sayings, he went away from Galilee and entered the region of Judea beyond the Jordan. 2 And large crowds followed him, and he healed them there. 3 And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, "Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?" 4 He answered, "Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, 'Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate." (Matthew 19:1-6 ESV)
So much for the deity of Christ and His understanding of the Scriptures. So much for the Sermon on the Mount and Christ's explanation of the Law of Moses: "you've heard it was said but I say to you... (Matthew 5:27)"
The very big deal is salvation. Poor Jesus, He didn’t know that Adam and Eve (v. 4) didn’t exist. He didn’t know that Genesis 2:24 was merely symbolic (vv. 5-6). Maybe He wasn’t God the Son and the Son of God after all. Looks like Paul got it wrong, too:
Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned--13 for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. 14 Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. (Romans 5:12-14 ESV)
Then there’s all that problematic stuff about the resurrection account in 1 Corinthians 15, tied to the myth of the “first Adam” in 1 Corinthians 15:45. Paul does all that first Adam stuff in 1 Timothy 2:23, too. What do scientists and our “Old Earth” friends know that the Holy Spirit speaking through the pens of the writers of Scripture did not know? What did our “Old Earth” friends get right that Jesus got so terribly wrong?
Why change the numbers to save your embarrassment and accomodate the culture? That’s part of suffering. If God can’t create the world in 6 days, then can He raise His Son from the dead in three? And if days don’t means days, then let’s at least be consistent all the way through our interpretive processes. Maybe Jonah was only in the fish for 3 seconds before the fish regurgitated. The problem is that days are defined in Genesis clearly as days (with evening and morning). All the interpretive gymnastics in the world won’t get you and me off the hook. And if you’re going to toss out days in Genesis, then toss it out everywhere else. No literal Adam and Eve: no original sin; no need for a Savior; no Savior; no salvation; no hope; no heavenly home: No Gospel. Think this through biblically, exegetically, and consistently because you’re putting the very content of the Gospel at stake.
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