12:6-7
6. Our Saviour ate the Passover
sacrifice with his disciples during the
night watch of the fourteenth. He offered to his disciples
the sign of the true Passover sacrifice. After Judas left them, he
took bread and blessed [it], and gave [it] to his disciples. He
said to them, “This is my body. Take
and eat from it, all of you.” He also blessed the
wine as follows, saying to them, “This is my blood, a new testament,
which is shed on behalf of many for the forgiveness of sins. Keep
doing this in memory of me
when you gather together.” Our Lord said these things
before he was seized. He stood up from where he had offered the
Passover sacrifice and given his body to be eaten and his blood to
be drunk, and he went with his disciples to that place where he
was seized. Whoever eats his body and
drinks his blood is counted with the
dead. By his own hands our Lord gave his body to be eaten,
and before he was crucified he gave his blood to be drunk. He was
seized on the night of the fourteenth and judged before the sixth
hour. At the sixth hour, they condemned him, raised him up, and
crucified him. When they were judging him he did not speak, and
he gave no reply to his judges. He could have spoken or replied,
yet [on a deeper level] it was impossible for one who was counted
with the dead to speak. From the sixth hour to the ninth there was
darkness, and at the ninth hour he handed over his Spirit to his
Father. He was among the dead during the night of the dawn of
the fifteenth, the night and the whole day of the Sabbath, and
three hours on Friday. During the night
of the dawn of Sunday, at the [same] time that he had given his
body and blood to his disciples, he
rose from among the dead.
7. Now show us, O sage, what these
three days and three nights were in which our Saviour was among the dead! We
see the three hours on Friday, and the night when the Sabbath dawned, and the whole
day, and [then] during the night of the first [day] of the week he rose. Define
for me what they are, these three days and three nights! Take note that
although the day and the night were completed, our Saviour spoke truly when he
said, “Just as Jonah son of Mattai in the stomach of a fish for three days
and three nights, so too will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth.”
Thus, from the time when he gave his body to be eaten and his blood to be drunk,
there were three days and three nights. It was night when Judas left them, and
the eleven disciples ate the body of our Saviour and drank his blood. Now take
note: [this was] one night, when Friday was dawning. And take note [that the
time] up to the sixth hour, when they judged him, [was] one day and one night.
[Then] there were three hours that were dark, from the sixth hour to the ninth,
and there were [also] three hours after the darkness. Take note [that this makes]
two days and two nights. [Then] the night when the Sabbath dawned was
completed, as well as the whole day of the Sabbath. Thus our Lord completed
three days and three nights among the dead, and during the night of Sunday he
rose from among the dead. (Adam Lehto, The Demonstrations of Aphrahat, the
Persian Sage [Gorgias Eastern Christian Studies 27; Piscataway, N.J.: Gorgias
Press, 2010], 282-83)
