ARE THE MIRACULOUS EVENTS AT THE CRUCIFIXION AFFIRMED OUTSIDE THE NT?

 

 

If the Bible is our foundation, then we need to know that it can support our life – our fears, temptations, hopes, and the courage of our convictions. Many questions challenge our convictions. For example, “What evidence is there that for the supernatural events that accompanied the Crucifixion – the three hours of darkness and the earthquake?” Surely, others would have reported these events, not just the Gospels, right?

 

Two Roman historians did address these events. Although their writings are no longer existent. Thallus, a historian writing in AD. 52, wrote to deny any supernatural elements accompanying the Crucifixion. Though his writings are lost to us, we have the quotations of other later writers. The writing of Thallus shows that the facts of Jesus' death were known and discussed in Rome as early as the middle of the first century, to the extent that unbelievers like Thallus thought it necessary to explain the matter of the three hours of darkness as something natural. He took the existence of Christ for granted. Neither Jesus, nor the darkness at his death, were ever denied. At the time of his writing, unbelievers had already been trying to explain the darkness at the time of the Crucifixion as a purely natural phenomenon.

 

However, Julius Africanus, a Christian historian, writing about A.D. 221, refers to Thallus’ account:

 

·       "Thallus, in his Third Book of Histories, explains away this darkness as an eclipse of the sun, unreasonably as it seems to me. For the Hebrews celebrate the Passover on the 14th day according to the moon, and the Passion of our Saviour falls 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 occur when the Moon is almost diametrically opposite the Sun?"

 

The second Roman historian was Phlegon (born 80 AD).  Origen of Alexandria (182-254 AD), in Against Celsus (Book II, Chap. XIV), wrote that Phlegon, in his "Chronicles", mentions Jesus:

 

·       "Now Phlegon, in the thirteenth or fourteenth book, I think, of his Chronicles, not only ascribed to Jesus a knowledge of future events (although falling into confusion about some things which refer to Peter, as if they referred to Jesus), but also testified that the result corresponded to His predictions."

 

Origin also referred to a description by Phlegon of an eclipse accompanied by earthquakes during the reign of Tiberius, that there was:

 

·       "the greatest eclipse of the sun" and that "it became night in the sixth hour of the day [noon] so that stars even appeared in the heavens. There was a great earthquake in Bithynia, and many things were overturned in Nicaea." (Wikipedia)

 

·       "And about this darkness - Phlegon recalls it in the Olympiads...Phlegon mentioned the eclipse which took place during the crucifixion of the Lord...and this is shown by the historical account of Tiberius Caesar."

 

Tiberius’ account is also lost. However, what we do have are testimonies to early histories of the darkness and the earthquake which had occurred at the time of the Crucifixion. It is no wonder that the Roman centurion stationed at the Cross uttered, “This was the Son of God” (Mark 15:39). We should do no less!