Monthly Archives: August 2023

Third Day

Spiritual, , , , , ,

I have come across this statement many times, recently, for example, Discovery World gave a program about the Shroud of Turin, where it was again said that Jesus was among the dead for three days, that is he was dead and was in the rock tomb for three days.

This is simply not true, which is why I would like to clear up this misunderstanding, which is based on the unfortunate confusion of “three days” and “third day”.

Let’s look at the facts: Jesus was crucified on a Friday and taken down at the end of the day on Friday and taken to the rock tomb. It is very important to know that this happened before the evening had set in, because the Jews considered the evening to be the beginning of the next day, and since the next day was Saturday, then they could not do any work, including burials, or any activity related to the dead. Jesus Christ therefore went to the rock tomb at the end of Friday, according to our convention, in the hours before the evening of Friday. The Sabbath day passed, which according to our calculation lasted until Saturday evening, when Sunday began. But since it was already dark at that time, the faithful could not visit the grave, only at dawn, which for us is still the beginning of Sunday, but for the Jews, this was already well within Sunday.

Let’s calculate the time in the way we are used to: Jesus could therefore have been in the tomb from Friday evening to Sunday morning, but this was not three whole days, but only one whole day, a period from evening to midnight, and a period from midnight to dawn, which in total does not reach even two days.

So Jesus was not in the tomb for three days.

Where does the misunderstanding come from? From the fact that Jesus repeatedly told his followers that he would die but rise again on the third day. However, he never mentioned a three-day period, he always speaks of the third day.

What is this third day exactly?

In everyday language, this means the third day, the day after tomorrow. And then why is Sunday the third day? Because the first day is that day, Friday, the second day is Saturday, and the third day, that is Sunday.

It is quite clear that Sunday dawn is therefore not three days from the death on the cross, but a third day, that is a little more than one day.

The definition “third day” occurs very often in the Bible, if you have a Bible in txt or html or even pdf format, you can easily find the word, it can be found in many verses of the Old Testament, but it is just as common in the New Testament. An interesting occurrence can be found in the only report about Jesus’ childhood, when his parents take the 12-year-old Jesus to Jerusalem, only to realize that he is not with them on the way home. They go back to Jerusalem, where they find Jesus among the scribes whom he teaches, even though he is still a child. And he answers his parents when they question him, that he is acting in the Father’s affairs and that his parents need not fear him. The child Jesus was found by his parents on the third day.

A shockingly interesting parallel that I just noticed. The Father loses his son on Friday, who dies, perhaps we can say that with his death he acts in the affairs of the people, since he dies for the people. On the third day he rises, using the analogy, the Father finds him again.

Thus, the “third day” connects the 12-year-old Jesus with the 33-year-old Jesus, moreover, both stories take place in Jerusalem, so the location and duration are the same, in both cases loss and finding, death and resurrection, parent and child. It is surprising how interesting parallels and connections can be found even among distant parts of the Bible, if one reads carefully.

But I would like to touch on one more thing about the resurrection of Jesus, because no one has ever dealt with it in any meaningful way, and I would like to draw attention to this fact as well, because that is the only way we can see it really clearly. In the prophecies of Jesus about his own death and resurrection, the time designation “third day” is included, but this must be understood from our point of view, and this does not necessarily mean that Jesus was in the tomb from Friday night to Sunday morning, more precisely, it does not mean that Jesus rose at dawn on Sunday.

Why am I saying this? Simply because no one but Jesus was in the rock tomb, let alone, because it was a large stone and Roman soldiers guarded the entrance. So we cannot know anything about when he actually rose. For sure, on Sunday morning, the witnesses no longer found him in the grave, so the resurrection took place sometime between Friday night and Sunday morning, but in principle it could have happened at any time during this period. Since we cannot know anything about the exact time in the absence of eyewitnesses, we therefore accept that the resurrection took place at dawn on Sunday. But I say again, if we act with strict logical correctness, then we cannot declare this. In a court, for example, we could only say with certainty that this event happened sometime between Friday night and Sunday morning.

Obviously, Jesus knew that no one would come to the tomb until Sunday morning, since the Jews were not allowed to do such a thing on Saturday, so he could not formulate it with mathematical precision and say exactly when the resurrection would take place. It only made sense if his prediction marked the time when his followers would learn about it, and this time marking was precisely the “third day”.

And speaking of the events of Sunday morning, it is very interesting to note that the disciples were not the first at the tomb. Despite the fact that Jesus repeatedly and emphatically told them that he would rise on the third day after his death, not one of his disciples thought of being at the tomb in the morning. Peter’s behavior is understandable, he was still struggling with the shame of the three-time refusal, and he probably would have even hid underground from his own conscience and the accusing eyes of the others. But there is John, who saw the crucifixion and was a dear disciple of Jesus, and Jesus even entrusted his mother to him before the death on the cross, if anyone should have been there, John was it. Yet he was not the first, but Mary Magdalene, a woman, and not a disciple, at least not among the apostles. And she probably didn’t go there because of the prophecy either, but because she wanted to clean Jesus’ body as soon as possible and prepare it for burial. After all, it is very important for us to know that Jesus was hurriedly placed in the tomb on Friday night, since the Sabbath was already very close, they just wrapped him in the shroud and placed him in the tomb, but they could not even wash the blood from the body. This is probably why Mary hurried to the tomb, to take care of Jesus’ body in a dignified way and to make up for everything that was missed due to Friday’s haste.

Thus, in the end, she was the one who brought the news of the resurrection to the disciples, and in the end it was John who, seeing the shroud without the body, “saw and believed.”

Think about it, if the body of Jesus was not taken down on Friday night and there was time to wash it, then the Shroud of Turin would not preserve traces of blood with anatomical accuracy to this day. Timing is therefore incredibly important for the Shroud. If it were any other way, the Shroud would not preserve such a quantity and such an important, and especially such a precise trace of the crucifixion.

The “third day” was the most important event in human history. That is why we need to know exactly what this means, and we must not formulate it superficially or imprecisely, because a very important teaching can be lost as a result of one bad translation or one bad interpretation.

May 18, 2013

English translation: August 25, 2023

The Final Questions

Science, , , , , ,

If someone, like me, sets out to face the currently unsolved questions of physics, it is good to prepare in advance that the struggle will not be easy. The greatest scientists have wrestled with these problems for many centuries, mostly with little success. Still, the thing is, we can’t help but keep trying, more and more persistently and more and more creatively.

Many people may say that without an experimental basis, we have little chance to reach any conclusions about the most important problems, and nowadays, when billions (in dollars and euros) are spent on the LHC and other similar projects without achieving any serious success, it may seem foolish the cultivation of domestic physics.

The truth is, however, that the philosophical approach can work very well in the case of fundamental questions without any experiment, and the Greek philosophers have provided the most surprising and best examples of this. Zeno’s paradoxes are alive and well to this day, although there are proposals for solutions on the stage, but we cannot rest completely on this front. The Greek philosophers used their common sense alone to create a picture of the world consisting of atoms, realized that the Earth is spherical, and made incredible statements about, for example, infinite time. They constructed the beautiful science of geometry and also achieved fundamental results about numbers. All this without having built anything for it. And although Greek science obviously could not be successful in everything, they formulated the basic problems, the ones we still struggle with today.

In order to ask questions and outline problems, mere reason is sufficient, and of course the perceptions that can be called everyday. The best ideas come from observations that are so simple that you’re surprised no one else thought of it much earlier. The best example of this is the case of Olbers, who looked up at the stars as a doctor and realized that the assumption of a static universe infinite in time and space conflicts with our everyday experience that the night sky is dark.

In order to formulate the final questions, we do not need anything other than observation and thinking. The situation is different with drawing conclusions and theorizing. Since these are not simple problems – that’s why we called them final questions – so that the research work for answers does not feel unnecessary, even if we do not get anywhere in the world, we are forced to outline a pessimistic scenario as a first step. This is not an escape, but rather a kind of protection against failure. Perhaps the problem with today’s physics is that it is not prepared for failure. If the theory does not find experimental confirmation, then the theory is modified in such a way that the ability to prove or disprove it exceeds the technical possibilities. Thus, there is always the excuse that the theory was not verified only because of the limited experimental possibilities. For this, it is usually sufficient to set a few freely selectable constants, or even to use some mathematical trick in order to save the faulty theory.

It would be very, very important that the creators of unsuccessful theories do not have to fear the collapse of their professional careers, because in order to protect their jobs, they are thus forced to endlessly divulge even otherwise indefensible ideas. If physics is full of physicists who consider their university position and professional prestige more important than honesty, not many breakthroughs can be expected in the future either.

We have to face the possibility that we have limitations. The limit can be mathematics itself, it can be the human thinking itself, and it can also be a complexity limit to our understanding. Experiments can also have absolute physical limits, for example we cannot conduct experiments at the absolute zero degree temperature, because it is impossible to reach it. We cannot perform experiments outside the Universe either, so for example we cannot measure from the outside whether the Universe is rotating or not. Of course, these are obvious limitations, but there are also less obvious ones. For example, we cannot have knowledge of the “true” reality, we have to accept that reality is what we believe it to be. We cannot know about the subjective experiences of other people, only indirectly, never directly. In addition to these, there can be many limitations, the formulation of which can be a limitation, for example, it is very difficult to understand and explain self-referencing systems, and the final questions are actually about self-referencing systems.

So, without thinking about anything for now, let’s formulate the pessimistic principle: the ultimate questions can never be answered, due to our physical, mathematical, logical and thinking limitations. No matter how much we try, no matter how long and no matter what, the final theory will never be complete and without contradictions (as Gödel already proved about mathematics). There will always be an inexplicable and incomprehensible phenomenon, a perception that will escape even the most cunning theory.

So our first step should be this, let’s accept that we are doomed from the start. This is not so difficult, although at first it may seem extremely strange to many, I would prefer to say that it is just an honest acceptance of the fact that we are human. Omnipotence and perfect wisdom are not in our possession, nor will it be. So we must stand on this ground, and looking the world from here, we must construct it in our own consciousness.

Could even the dear Reader say this, “Why don’t we stop here and be satisfied with this much?”. The suggestion is completely justified. The truth is that human life can actually be lived risk-free, relaxed, and even completely happy without dealing with any of these problems, even for a minute. A musician, a painter, a farmer, even a writer, but even a soldier or a steel caster can live a full, balanced, perfectly happy life without even the tangential proximity of philosophy or physics. This is very important, and I would like my statement to be really emphasized, that only those who feel that this is an indispensable part of their life should deal with this type of problems. For example, when I was in the seventh grade of primary school, I had thoughts like that maybe evolution could also work during the struggle of the Universes, or that time actually originates from the fact that we all move at the speed of light in a spatial dimension, and even then I felt incredible excitement thinking about such things during. Today I know that for me scientific thinking and philosophy cause more pleasure than alcohol or the use of mind-altering drugs for others. Maybe that’s why I don’t drink alcohol, and I’m not addicted to any other passion either, for me, chewing on the things of the world ensures a perfect full life.

Thus, I declare that those who find joy in it, should boldly open the book of Nature and research it, even if, as we know, we may be doomed from the start. Just as a mole cannot deal with the colorful world above the surface (I also wrote a short story about this), our fate may be the same, and time, for example, will forever remain indecipherable and incomprehensible to us. But the fact that we are thinking people – and may even be the only conscious species in the Universe – obligates us to try the impossible and face the difficult questions. In case we have a helper (another short story was written about this: during the destruction of a planet, chance writes the much-sought-after secret of existence, which of course no one reads). After this, I think we are ready to formulate the four biggest questions of humanity:

1. What is time? This question is different from the next three, which have in common that all three are examples of a consequence without antecedent. Time, on the other hand, is the framework of all things, and at the same time, it is the most cunning, most elusive concept that only humans can encounter.

2. How did the Universe originate?

3. How did life originate?

4. How did we gain consciousness?

So the program was put together. What can we do with it? Well, according to the pessimistic principle, maybe nothing. But during the search, we can still feel good about it, and we can even find treasures…

October 22, 2012.

English translation: August 23, 2023.