Wednesday or Friday?

This was posted today on Dr. Rod Decker’s NT Resources blog:

I’ve just posted a pdf document that has some notes regarding the chronology of the Passion Week. I suggest a minority view with a Wednesday crucifixion to resolve two chronological problems with the data.

Decker presents a compelling argument for Wednesday. I lean toward a Thursday crucifixion myself, but I would accept Wednesday before Friday any day of the week. Despite the generally accepted tradition that the crucifixion was on Friday, I think the phrase three days and three nights (Matthew 12:40) deserves closer attention than some writers seem willing to give it.

My preferred harmony of the Gospels is the one by Robert Thomas and Stanley Gundry, published by Moody Press in 1978. It's a great resource for chronological studies in the Gospels, containing several helpful essays after the harmony. Yet in the essay on the day of the crucifixion they take the Friday position without dealing thoroughly with evidence and arguments. Thomas and Gundry argue that

[it] was common practice among the Jews to refer to a fractional part of a day or night as one day and one night (cf. Gen. 42:17-18; 1 Sam. 30:12-13; 1 Kings 20:29; 2 Chron. 10:5, 12; Esther 4:16; 5:1). Hence “three days and three nights” does not necessitate three twenty-four hour days between Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection but is just another way of saying He was raised on “the third day.” (A Harmony of the Gospels, p. 320)

They don’t interact with other passages that might present a problem for the Friday view. Despite this uncharacteristically superficial treatment of biblical evidence (which Decker deals with more adequately), I highly recommend Thomas and Gundry for wider harmonization issues. Since my copy of the Harmony is from the seventies, I suppose it’s possible that a later edition has a more satisfying treatment of this question.

Thanks to Rod Decker for posting this document. What are your thoughts on this issue? Do you know of other resources to help us reach an informed decision?

Wednesday or Friday?