What happened on Saturday?

Yesterday was Good Friday, when Jesus was supposedly crucified. Tomorrow is Resurrection Sunday, when Jesus supposedly rose from the dead. But what about Saturday? It was the  only complete 24 hour day of the supposed 3 days Jesus spent in the grave. What was going on? Well, we aren't really told much of anything about that day in the scriptures.

If the disciples were obedient to the law of Moses, they were not doing anything that could be classified as work.  They were spending their day in forced idleness. However, according to Matthew 27 the day after the crucifixion is when the chief priests and the Pharisees went to Pilate and requested that the tomb be sealed and guarded. Were the chief priests and Pharisees breaking the Sabbath? Jesus had eaten the passover meal on the first day of the passover week with his disciples in Matthew 26.The day of the crucifixion was technically still the Passover, since days were measured from twilight to twilight. It also had been preparation day, as the day before the Sabbath, Saturday,  was called. The sequence of holy days can get confusing as they sometimes overlap, but that is the only way to get Matthew's account to make any  sense, if it is assumed to be correct. That first day of the Passover week should have been a non work day as well, according to Leviticus 23. The Pharisees and chief priests should have been holding sacred assembly, instead of trying to get Jesus crucified. It is all very confusing.

Mark has the same timeline as Matthew: 1. The day the  Passover lamb is killed and disciples look for a place to eat the Passover. 2. Twilight Passover meal/ betrayal/crucifixion/burial/ day before sabbath 3. Sabbath. 4. Empty tomb Sunday. Mark says nothing at all about the sabbath sealing and guarding of the tomb.

Luke also has the same timeline. He also neglects to mention the sabbath sealing and guarding of the tomb. However, he makes sure to mention that the women who had been with Jesus spent the sabbath resting according to the commandment. Here Joseph of Aramathea wraps Jesus's body but the women prepared the spices. 

John has a very different story. Before the Passover, there is a meal with the disciples where Jesus washes their feet. This is work and would not have been done on the first day of the Passover week. Then comes a lot of talk, the betrayal, arrest, the bringing before Pilate, and the crucifixion. In chapter 18 verse 28, it is made clear that the Passover meal has not happened yet, because it says the Jews were anxious to avoid ceremonial uncleanness so they could eat the Passover. Chapter 19 verse 20 says that was the day of preparation for the sabbath. The Passover apparently fell on the sabbath (Saturday) in this account. Here Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus wrap and prepare the body with spices ( no mention of the women) and place it in a tomb, because the sabbath was coming. But this act  would have made them ceremonially unclean and unable to eat the Passover/sabbath meal. John says nothing about the sabbath day itself. 

Needless to say, in spite of the fact that John's version appears to have a different timeline, christians have come up with many ways to reconcile the accounts, including copying errors, confusion with the number of days in the Passover week, what day of the week the Passover started on, etc. However, some scholars feel that John's timeline is a deliberate attempt to create the image of Jesus as the (Passover) lamb of god which takes away the sins of the world, as mention in John 1. The other gospels do not use that phraseology. Instead they have Jesus giving his body, and his disciples symbolically eating it, at the Passover meal aka Last Supper.  John does not. 

There are many extrabiblical teachings and traditions about that Saturday's events, not usually in protestant circles though. I never heard a word about it for the forty years I was a christian.