Pharisees' request for a sign from the Messiah

[rstrats]

When responding to the Pharisees' request for a sign, why do you suppose the Messiah made the specific point that He would be in the "heart of the earth" for 3 days and 3 nights?

[rstrats]

I imagine that they were looking for a miracle. They wanted a spectacle of some kind.

But why did He think that a length of three days and three nights might be sufficient to satisfy the scribes and Pharisees request?

BTW, (not that it's relevant to this topic) but you wrote "Jesus died during the day on Friday – that is day/night 1." Actually, Friday night had been over some 9 hours by the time of the Messiah's death.

[TRANSPONDER]

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #10]
Perhaps . . . Perhaps the centurions who had the mission to guard Jesus tomb, had their free weekend.
So they left their place on friday to go home and celebrate Easter and celebrate the resurrection of Christ!

Do you not too think so?

Nice one. I like it. However, the centurions (there may have been two, one at Caesarea and the other (possibly Nautius Maximus) in the Jerusalem garrison. would hardly have done the guarding of the tomb (if you can believe it) themselves.

What do you think the scribes and Pharisees were looking for when they asked for a sign?

I imagine that they were looking for a miracle. They wanted a spectacle of some kind. They wanted to see Jesus jump off a high building and be caught by angels, or turn stones in to bread or something like that. Herod wanted the same from Jesus during the last week of Jesus' life.

They already had that. Jesus majicked a meal for 5,000 out of scraps and raised people from the dead or sickness. John even call these 'signs'. What was wanted was some Cosmic sign from God that the lase Days were coming so they could prepare. Jesus answer is that there ill be no sign as well as saying there are signs they should be able to tell (who said the bible had to make sense?) other than his own resurrection.

[TRANSPONDER]

I imagine that they were looking for a miracle. They wanted a spectacle of some kind.

But why did He think that a length of three days and three nights might be sufficient to satisfy the scribes and Pharisees request?

BTW, (not that it's relevant to this topic) but you wrote "Jesus died during the day on Friday – that is day/night 1." Actually, Friday night had been over some 9 hours by the time of the Messiah's death.

It wasn't how long the resurrection took, but that it happened. Which is the point raised in another thread - nobody saw it. Not the Sadducees in the Temple nor the Pharisees in the synagogues. All they would have heard were claims about the risen messiah and the stories contradict, so why would they have believed it?

The answer is that, to the writers, they didn't and were predestined not to, so there was no point in telling them. Jesus (in Matthew and Luke, and in different places) laments about how Jerusalem wouldn't nestle under his wings and would be bulldozed by the Romans to punish them for it. But why should they? Luke and Matthew, using Q again, tell us that Jesus answered that point to John's messengers. He's done the healings as Signs that he was the messiah. That should be enough for the Sadducees and Pharisees, just as the Gentiles didn't even need that but had Faith in Jesus before he's really done anything.

But that's what you get when Christian believers write a back story to a conclusion that already existed as Dogma - God turned from the Jews to the Greeks because they didn't believe Jesus, and if you swallow Mark 4.11 - 13 it was intended that they would not. In the Greek view, the Jews were damned from the start and never mind them being 'God's people'. In their Gentile view, only Christians were 'God's people'.

"Faithless generation, how long will I be with you?" takes on more meaning when we understand that the disciples didn't have enough Faith to cure people, but it was a metaphor for the whole Generation of Jews who hadn't Faith. Their only purpose was for the disciples to pas on the faith to those Gentiles who would believe it and the Jews would be damned as they deserved.

It explains that puzzling ambivalence if the gospels towards the disciples. Sure, they were chosen to take the message to the 'nations', but they themselves never matched up, never had enough faith, sank in the water where Jesus walked, ran away when there was danger, denied Jesus not just once but three times and even betrayed him. When one understands that they were (as Jews) always intended to symbolise a people who were not good enough for Jesus, and were never intended to be (even the Mission was passed to Paul) then the failings of the disciples and the apparent predestined failure of the Jews to believe Jesus, makes sense.

[bjs1]

But why did He think that a length of three days and three nights might be sufficient to satisfy the scribes and Pharisees request?

I am not sure that he did. That may have been part of his point. The Pharisees wanted a spectacle, but the Christ would not give them one. According to the gospels he performed many miracles, but his miracles always had a message behind them. They were not miracles just for the sake of a spectacle.

The Pharisees wanted a miraculous sign, but instead they would get a call to faith. They wanted a God who would fight all the battles and defeat their enemies, and instead they got Messiah who was executed on a cross by an oppressive foreign power.

Jesus’ message in this passage was less a message of, “This will convince you,” and more a message of, “If you don’t believe now, then you will not believe even if someone comes back from the dead.”

[TRANSPONDER]

I agree. That's just what it is - in the gospels. Believe it or not. The Jewish messiah should liberate Israel but the Christian messiah has the message 'Click allow cookies, pestiferous notifications and permission to access your private data, or you don't get admission into my site'.

[The Nice Centurion]

In modern days Israel sure could use a coming of a messiah to liberaye them from the arabs and tourists.

[TRANSPONDER]

In modern days Israel sure could use a coming of a messiah to liberaye them from the arabs and tourists.

I feel I'm in hot potato territory here, but I don't know whether everyone is waiting for the Last Days to happen and see just which side God is on, whether there is a sizeable movement to help things along with knocking down the Golden mosque and rebuilding the temple, a flurry of shootings and car - bombings in response and a general carpet bombing by the US just to get Armageddon going, I know there's some who would like to see it.

[rstrats]

I am not sure that he did.

I wonder why He didn't just stick with what He told them in Mark 8:12?

[TRANSPONDER]

I am not sure that he did.

I wonder why He didn't just stick with what He told them in Mark 8:12?

Because different writers wrote different things not that Jesus contradicted himself with Matthew 16:3 And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times. but the different writers contradict each other. Often.

This is the explanation - Jesus said none of that; it is other writers making their own arguments and stuffing them in Jesus' mouth. Why didn't they notice the contradiction? Perhaps because nobody ever seems to.

[bjs1]

I am not sure that he did.

I wonder why He didn't just stick with what He told them in Mark 8:12?

This is one of several themes that are repeated in different ways throughout the gospel. As hinted at above, we also see aspects of this theme in the temptation of Jesus and in his trial before Herod.