If it was early evening low on the horizon it would be barely visible (oh and ALL lunar eclipses occur at full moon).

I have personally witnessed 3 lunar eclipses (all in the same country) over the last ten years and the most impressive was virtually straight up and occured at midnight. One at half mast so-to-speak was nice but not really spectacular and the first one I saw was low down and barely noticeable. Anyhow I thought the whole point of the story was that he had to be off the nails by sundown?

Amen-Moses

A lunar eclipse != unusual daytime darkness. Good Grief!!!

And here is that lunar eclipse of April 3, 33.

Enter Penumbra 14 h 36 m
Enter Umbra 16 h 00 m
Leave Umbra 18 h 51 m
Leave Penumbra 20 h 14 m

Jerusalem is at
Latitude 34 d 20 m N
Longitude 35 d 13 m E

Which means that local Jerusalem time is UT + 2 h 21 m and that the times become

Enter Penumbra 16 h 57 m
Enter Umbra 18 h 21 m
Leave Umbra 21 h 12 m
Leave Penumbra 22 h 35 m

Meaning that the Moon will be deep into the eclipse when it rises in the Jerusalem evening.


[This message has been edited by lpetrich (edited May 15, 2001).]

That darkness only existed in the mind of Jesus the Jew and not Jesus the man. The "light of common day" is not really from the sun but a certain quantum of light extrapolated from the celestial light by the mind of man (much like pleasure, pain, sound, taste etc). So yes, this was one of the darker days of Jesus the Jew. From the other side of this perspective the "sun stopped" or time "stood still" when the ego raptured or was crucified.

Amos

OK ok ok ok ok. I get it! Amos, you're really
the person that wrote that book about the
entire story of Jesus taking place in
Qumran and it all being symbolic, right?

Lance

I think Amos is on the same stuff John was when he wrote Revealation...

Quite right. And how do we treat other ancient sources when they report alleged miracles (as they so often do, even the "reliable" historians)? We ignore them. We disbelieve them. Reasonable people don't believe that an earthquake occurred at the time of many important events, as ancient sources report. Reasonable poeple don't believe that dead men came to life, as ancient sources so often allege. Reasonable people don't believe that a man born of woman was a god, regardless of what ancient sources say.

So by all means, let's treat the Gospels like other ancient sources (and specifically like other anonymous sources). Let's be critical but not stupid. When they say that a man called Jesus lived, we should find it plausible. When they say that He said such-and-such, we should be skeptical. When they say that an earthquake occurred on the day he died, and dead men walked out of their graves, and that Jesus Himself walked out of His tomb after being dead for two days, we should dismiss such wild stories the same way that we dismiss similar stories in other ancient sources.

Lance

Bingo!!!!!

I certainly believe there is some historical value to the gospels. But by all means, lets treat them like any anonymous source from this time period and believe the plausable things, and discard the wildly mythological.

Like a resurrection from the dead...

[This message has been edited by Lance (edited May 15, 2001).]

Both fundamentalists and secularists seem to have a hard time with the parabolic.

The sky darkened, the temple curtain tore and the dead got up and walked.

Instead of taking the texts literally and in one case saying "Boy were they dumb!" and in the other case saying "Well, it must have happened like that once in world history" I think there is another way to look at the evidence without turning the ancient gospel writers into dumbos like us.

Both sides in this discussion are like Peter Bly, the character of whom Wordsworth sang:

a primrose by the river's brim
A yellow primrose was to him;
And it was nothing more.

OK, aikido7, what's your point?

Are you *agreeing* with skeptics like Earl Doherty about the level of historicity of the New Testament? That is what your claims of allegoricality would imply.

But Lance, that would be silly because you would throw out the baby and drink the proverbial bathwater. The "wildly mythological" is the story presented by the historical account.

Amos