The Highway Forums General Discussion Open Forum Matthew 12:40

Actually, the purpose of the OP is to find - if it exists - some writing from the first century or before that shows that a phrase stating a specific number of days and/or a specific number of nights was ever used when it absolutely couldn't have included at least parts of each one of the specific number of days and at least parts of each one of the specific number of nights.

Exactly how, in the case of Jonah, these three days and three nights were computed Scripture nowhere reveals. Were they three entire days and nights, seventy-two hours in all, or was the period of his stay in the belly of the “fish” one entire day plus parts of two other days? We do not know. We do know that in Esther 4:16 the third day cannot have been an entire day (see 5:1, “on the third day,” not “after the third day”). See also the apocryphal book Tobit 3:12, 13. To say, therefore, that in order to do justice to Matt. 12:40 Jesus must have been in the grave three entire days plus three entire nights is unreasonable. It is contrary to Jewish usage of such terms.