According to Mark’s account of Jesus’ trial, “some people stood up and gave false testimony against him, saying ‘We heard him say “I will destroy this sanctuary that is made with hands, and after three days I will build another that is not made with hands.”’ Not even then was their testimony consistent” (14:57–59). Although earlier in the Gospel Jesus had predicted that someone would destroy the temple, he never claimed that it would be he. At his crucifixion, taunters repeated the slur against him: “Destroyer of the sanctuary and builder of it in three days, rescue yourself by coming down from the cross!” (15:29). Mark’s readers should recognize the irony in their mockery: Jesus was not destroying the temple, his murderers were. When he expired, the veil of the temple was rent from top to bottom, an apparent portent of its eventual devastation. Then, “after three days,” his body was raised from the dead.
(
Two Shipwrecked Gospels, p. 296)
Note 175 in the same page describes in detail what prof MacDonald has to say about 'after 3 days':
Kurt Paesler has argued in detail for the following history of the saying about the
fall of the temple (Das Tempelwort Jesu: Die Traditionen von Tempelzerstörung und Tempelerneuerung im Neuen Testament [FRLANT 184; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1997]).
• The origin of the saying lies in “the genuine Jewish expectation of an eschatological temple” (228).
• The earliest form of this saying, perhaps from Jesus himself, is preserved in Mark 13:2, except for the words “after three days.” Paesler reconstructs the saying as follows: “One stone here will not be left on another stone that will not be destroyed” (121). He even proposes and Aramaic original to the saying (256–61).
• The next discernable stage of the tradition informed John 2:19; here the words “after three days” already have been added to reflect Jesus’ resurrection. Paesler reconstructs the Johannine traditional saying like this: “I will destroy this sanctuary and after three days I will raise it up.” To reconstruct this tradition Paesler, without textual justification, alters John’s λύσατε, “dissolve,” to read καταλύσω, “I will destroy,” and ἐγερῶ, “I will raise,” to οἰκοδομήσω, “I will build” (228). The Evangelist altered the saying in a controversy with Docetists (“He was speaking of the sanctuary of his body” [2:21]), but a saying similar to the traditional one flowed into the version now found in Gos. Thom. 71: “Jesus says, ‘I will [destroy this] house, and no one will be able to build it [again]’ ” (121–22)
Basically, as the Paesler's argument goes, the construct
'after 3 days' has been added since it reflected late anti-docetic polemic. If Jesus is alluding to his body, then he
has one.
In other terms, something as: too much theological to be original.
MacDonald quotes the similar saying in Thomas where the temple is considered a
material temple, so preventing the possibility that the original logion referred cryptically to the body of Jesus.
In doing so, Paesler even overlooked the big problem, which, on the other hand, has not escaped the notice of our own Andrew: