Q: Matthew 27:45 says that from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour. And, in 27:51-53, Matthew reports a great earthquake, which resulted in the opening of some tombs. Following that, Many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many. It is strange that there is no record of these extraordinary events outside of the Gospels.
A: (Thats not quite true, if by the Gospels one refers to the four canonical Gospels. The Adoptionist/Gnostic writing called the Gospel of Peter also mentions the darkness which occurred during Jesus crucifixion, and mentions that the streets of Jerusalem became so dark that people went about with lamps. This should be qualified, though, by the observance that the text of the Gospel of Peter, in its extant form at any rate, shows some pretty clear signs of source-dependence upon the canonical Gospels.)
Detailed historical sources regarding what was going on in Judea in A.D. 26-30 are hard to come by. Besides the Gospels, we have the writings of Josephus, and thats about it. And it is not surprising that Josephus should fail to record strange weather phenomena that had occurred in A.D. 29 or 30, inasmuch as that period simply didnt have a lot to do with the subjects of his major works (Antiquities of the Jews and Jewish Wars). Although now and then Josephus diverges into a completely tangential anecdote -- preserving, for instance, the story of Paulina simply because he liked it, it seems -- his occasional detour into trivia doesnt give us grounds for seriously expecting him to make a note of every earthquake and meteorological phenomenon that he could have mentioned, especially earthquakes and meteorological phenomena unrelated to his primary subject-matter.
The scarcity of extra-Biblical affirmation of these events does not draw their veracity into question; it merely demonstrates how few and far between our extra-Biblical sources about what was happening in Judea at this time are. One could similarly say that very many unusual things that were recorded by Josephus in Jewish Wars, and are accepted as historical, are not confirmed by other sources.
Yours in Christ,
Waterrock
A: (Thats not quite true, if by the Gospels one refers to the four canonical Gospels. The Adoptionist/Gnostic writing called the Gospel of Peter also mentions the darkness which occurred during Jesus crucifixion, and mentions that the streets of Jerusalem became so dark that people went about with lamps. This should be qualified, though, by the observance that the text of the Gospel of Peter, in its extant form at any rate, shows some pretty clear signs of source-dependence upon the canonical Gospels.)
Detailed historical sources regarding what was going on in Judea in A.D. 26-30 are hard to come by. Besides the Gospels, we have the writings of Josephus, and thats about it. And it is not surprising that Josephus should fail to record strange weather phenomena that had occurred in A.D. 29 or 30, inasmuch as that period simply didnt have a lot to do with the subjects of his major works (Antiquities of the Jews and Jewish Wars). Although now and then Josephus diverges into a completely tangential anecdote -- preserving, for instance, the story of Paulina simply because he liked it, it seems -- his occasional detour into trivia doesnt give us grounds for seriously expecting him to make a note of every earthquake and meteorological phenomenon that he could have mentioned, especially earthquakes and meteorological phenomena unrelated to his primary subject-matter.
The scarcity of extra-Biblical affirmation of these events does not draw their veracity into question; it merely demonstrates how few and far between our extra-Biblical sources about what was happening in Judea at this time are. One could similarly say that very many unusual things that were recorded by Josephus in Jewish Wars, and are accepted as historical, are not confirmed by other sources.
Yours in Christ,
Waterrock
