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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 May 2011
PRODIGIES ATTENDANT ON THE DEATH OF JESUS.
According to the evangelical accounts, the death of Jesus was accompanied by extraordinary phenomena. Three hours before, we are told, a darkness diffused itself, and lasted until Jesus expired (Matt. xxvii. 45. parall.); in the moment of his death the veil of the temple was torn asunder from the top to the bottom, the earth quaked, the rocks were rent, the graves were opened, and many bodies of departed saints arose, entered into the city, and appeared to many (Matt. v. 51 ff. parall.). These details are very unequally distributed among the evangelists: the first alone has them all; the second and third merely the darkness and the rending of the veil; while the fourth knows nothing of all these marvels.
We will examine them singly according to their order. The darkness σϰότος which is said to have arisen while Jesus hung on the cross, cannot have been an ordinary eclipse of the sun, caused by the interposition of the moon between his disc and the earth, since it happened during the Passover, and consequently about the time of the full moon. The gospels however do not directly use the terms ἔϰλειψις τοῦἡλίου (eclipse of the sun) the two first speaking only of darkness σϰότος in general, and though the third adds with somewhat more particularity : ϰαὶ ἑσϰοτίσθη ὁ ἥλιος, and the sun was darkened, still this might be said of any species of widely extended obscuration.
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