Early non-Christian corroboration of the miraculous darkness at the crucifixion The pagan historian Thallus lived roughly around AD 5-60. Unfortunately, his ancient works have perished, and so we learn from a different historian, Sextus Julius Africanus. Africanus wrote around A.D. 221: "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." (1) Now, what troubled me, if I remember correctly about the very first time I came across this, is that it is cited by a Christian historian. How do we know he didn't make this up? It isn't beneath people to forge writings, even in a time where probably people could point it out because they have already read it. I know this because Josephus's Jesus passage has some obvious interpolations. I don'...
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