Were the dead raised on Friday or Sunday?
The verse says that at the moment that Christ died the temple veil was ripped AND graves opened up with bodies being resurrected. But Paul states in 1 Cor 15:23 that Christ was the “firstfruit” of resurrection.
Commentators offer 2 solutions.
1. The graves were opened by the earthquake at the moment of death on Friday, but the bodies weren’t resurrected until after Christ on Easter. (So you have open graves with dead corpses from Friday until Sunday) Since Jews would not be anywhere near a graveyard on the Sabbath/Saturday (because contact with a dead body would render them ceremonially unclean) their presence would not have been noticed until Sunday (when they actually were resurrected)
2. Those who were resurrected at the time of Christ’s death were only temporarily resuscitated until they would die for the last time later (like Lazarus and others that Jesus raised from the dead).
Matthew is the only one of the 4 gospels that mentions graves being opened and bodies being raised in tandem with the crucifixion and resurrection. By the time Matthew wrote his gospel he was speaking historically and never intended to give a moment by moment chronology. What he was trying to communicate was the miraculous events that were accomplished by the crucifixion and resurrection.
PERSONALLY, I think explanation #1 makes more sense, but you are free to disagree with me since it would be difficult to draw absolute conclusions since other gospel writers do not corroborate the details. I don’t deny that it actually happened because it is in the inspirited Word of God! But when it exactly happened or who exactly was resuscitated/resurrected are more than God has chosen to reveal to us. Compare the English translations to see how translation can give a different shade of meaning ESV uses 2 sentences; NIV uses one sentence; NASB uses a comma; and KJV uses a semi-colon. Verse 53 clarifies that these resurrected bodies did NOT go into Jerusalem to testify of the resurrection until after Christ was resurrected. So the reader is left to guess if they were resurrected on Friday and simply waited 2 days to tell anybody, or if their resurrection didn’t actually happen until Sunday.
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