lpetrich

I'm half-thinking about writing an Agora article about Pliny the Elder, Philo, and Josephus, three scholars who could have recorded the Crucifixion darkness, but who did not. I'd explain who they were and what work they did, and why I believe that they would have recorded that event, if it had happened.

Anyone interested?

Secular Pinoy

Sounds interesting. I'm quite interested in such an analysis, of why secular historians were unable to record the said event. Are there any contemporary historians who were able to record the darkness, and if so, will you be tackling them as well?

Peter Kirby

Would you be covering Thallus and Phlegon per the statement of Julius Africanus in Georgius Syncellus Chron.? It's supposed to be bang-up evidence.

"As to His works severally, and His cures effected upon body and soul, and the mysteries of His doctrine, and the resurrection from the dead, these have been most authoritatively set forth by His disciples and apostles before us. On the whole world there pressed a most fearful darkness; and the rocks were rent by an earthquake, and many places in Judea and other districts were thrown down. This darkness Thallus, in the third book of his History, calls, as appears to me without reason, an eclipse of the sun. For the Hebrews celebrate the passover on the 14th day according to the moon, and the passion of our Saviour fails on the day before the passover; but an eclipse of the sun takes place only when the moon comes under the sun. And it cannot happen at any other time but in the interval between the first day of the new moon and the last of the old, that is, at their junction: how then should an eclipse be supposed to happen when the moon is almost diametrically opposite the sun? Let that opinion pass however; let it carry the majority with it; and let this portent of the world be deemed an eclipse of the sun, like others a portent only to the eye.48 Phlegon records that, in the time of Tiberius Caesar, at full moon, there was a full eclipse of the sun from the sixth hour to the ninth-manifestly that one of which we speak. But what has an eclipse in common with an earthquake, the rending rocks, and the resurrection of the dead, and so great a perturbation throughout the universe? Surely no such event as this is recorded for a long period. But it was a darkness induced by God, because the Lord happened then to suffer. And calculation makes out that the period of 70 weeks, as noted in Daniel, is completed at this time."

Richard Carrier already has an article on Thallus: An Analysis though.

You will also have to deal with the claim sometimes made that the darkness covered a localized area (Judea) and not the entire globe.

You would be obligated to quote the statement of Edward Gibbon in chapter fifteen of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire:

"Under the reign of Tiberius, the whole earth, or at least
a celebrated province of the Roman Empire, was involved in
a preternatural darkness of three hours. Even this
miraculous event, which ought to have excited the wonder,
the curiousity, and the devotion of mankind, passed without
notice in an age of science and history. It happened during
the lifetime of Seneca and the elder Pliny, who must have
experienced the immediate effects, or received the earliest
intelligence, of the prodigy. Each of these philosophers,
in a laborious work, has recorded all the great phenomena of
Nature, earthquakes, meteors, comets, and eclipses, which his
indefatigable curiousity could collect. Both the one and the
other have omitted to mention the greatest phenomenon to which
the mortal eye has been witness since the creation of the globe.
A distinct chapter of Pliny is designed for eclipses of an
extraordinary nature and unusual duration; but he contents
himself with describing the singular defect of light which
followed the murder of Caesar ..."

Finally, it would be a nice touch to indicate mythical parallels and explain why such a legend of supernatural darkness would have arisen.

Oh and it would be most entertaining if you crossed sabers with The Dark Side.

best,
Peter Kirby

Doctor X

Only True Believers [Accepting applications.--Ed.] could see the darkness. . . .

--J.D.

Amos

The darkness is not to be seen (you can't 'see' darkness) but the apparent darkness can be explained by the void created when the ego died.

To understand this you must go to Rev. 22:5 "The night shall be no more. They will need no light from lamps or the sun, for the Lord God shall give them light . . .." According to this we use our ego identity to transform sound-waves into sound and light-waves into light and so without an ego identity to accomplish this the "light of common day" must have become very dim indeed.

I should add here that the light of common day is an illusion and I would expect that all of 'Judiasm' experienced a black-out when illumination occured.

Doctor X

Incorrect, again.

--J.D.

Amos

Oh well, I was expecting that response and I suppose next you are going to tell me that you can *hear silence* in the same way as you can *see darkness* and *feel pain* where there is none.

Doctor X

A brief glance at the physiology of sight would, of course, prevent the individual from making such irresponsible claims.

Not that suggestions he better his understanding with evidence have ever been heeded.

Those who experience "phantom limb" pain or thalamic syndromes would probably correct his petulence with less decorum than I do.

The individual is welcome to his delusions though he should have the decency to spare others of them.

--J.D.

Amos

But sir, don't you know that science is but an extrapolation of omniscience as well, and if this is true, why should I bother? Yes, I know all about it because I have a mother-in-law like that. Opposite to this I maintain that all pain is an illusion because human life itself is an illusion (as it must be or eternal life could not be real). This being the case the light of common day must also be an illusion or the celestial light could not be real.

Amlodhi

How can omniscience extrapolate?