The commonly accepted understanding is that Jesus died on the cross on Friday, the 14th of Abib, shortly after 3 p.m., and that, as soon as the necessary permission had been obtained, he was hurriedly wrapped in a shroud and laid in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathaea. Saturday, Abib the 15th which began Friday at sunset and ended at sunset Saturday, was the Sabbath. All were then resting. But when the Sabbath ended, some of the women brought the necessary ingredients for the preparation of the body. (Luke 24:1-10) According to this account, the body of Jesus was in the tomb part of Friday, all Saturday and about half of the Sunday. This would, it is argued, in Hebrew colloquialism, be three days-and-nights.
There may be a difference of opinion as to the day of the crucifixion and burial, but that our Lord rose on the first day of the week, our Sunday, is the universal opinion, founded both on tradition and history. Sunday was the day on which the first Christians came together for Christian worship. (Rev. 1:10) Pliny, in the first or beginning of the second century, reported to the emperor, Trajan, that the Christians had a certain day on which they sang a hymn to Christ as a God. That could not have been on the Mosaic Sabbath. Justin Martyr (140 A. D.) states positively that the Christians had the custom of assembling the first day of the week, because on that day our Lord rose from the dead, and Tertullian (200 A. D.) speaks of Sunday as the day of resurrection of our Lord (die Domini resurrexionis.—Critical and popular Bible Encyclopaedia, Lord’s Day).
The change from the seventhday to the firstday Sabbath at the end of the old dispensation was as natural as it was inevitable. As good Jews, the first Christians kept the established day of rest. But that day ended at sunset, at six p.m., say, and the first day began at the same hour. They, therefore, had ample time, on the first day, before retiring, to gather in the homes, for Christian worship, for love feasts, for testimonies concerning the crucified and resurrected Savior. And that is just what happened. Thus, the day after the Sabbath became, naturally, the Lord’s day, and the Christian Sabbath, from the very first day of the resurrection.
The Mosiac Sabbath was instituted in commemoration of the work of God in creation (Rev. 21:1-5).