Talk:Crucifixion darkness

Welcome. Tcisco 02:20, 27 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Neutrality

This article is written with a strong presumption that the Biblical three hours of darkness did occur. There is very little criticism of this belief. It's strongly biased towards the conservative Christian view Nik42 04:16, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Historians have relied on biblical and extra-biblical accounts to establish chronologies. This article cites peer reviewed references from both sides of the argument against the three-hour blackout: solar eclipses and lunar eclipses. Tertiary and primary secular accounts from documents that have been judged to be reliable and spurious are consistent with the Synoptic Gospels. Professional astronomers have analyzed those records under the assumptions of reliable and unreliable descriptions. The descriptive aspect of the crucifixion events provided by this article stems from a series of peer reviewed assessments, not biased presumptions.Tcisco 13:12, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Nik needs to learn what "bias" means. This article is about eyewitness accounts of people from the time, their writtings, and writings that directly referred to those writings.. How is that bias or presumption of historical certainty?VP1974 16:56, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The article is written with the assumption that only the accounts that reported a darkness are accurate, and that the lack of an account in other records is a cover-up of some sort. Nik42 19:00, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The so called "cover-ups" took the form of early attempts to attribute the unusual darkness to a solar eclipse. Those accounts and corresponding astronomical papers have been cited in the article. Various explanations for the silence of notable historians were cited. Their silence was not a cover-up, but an abstension from comment. Denying the event is equivalent denying the crucifixion. The lengthy darkness, earthquake, and crucifixion cannot be separated. Secular and biblical records do not support denying the darkness and accepting the crucifixion. And, I have yet to encounter a document that claims the crucifixion transpired without the darkness. A paper was cited that presented a spectacular lunar eclipse as an alternate explanation.

With respect to accuracy, the oldest account happens to be the most comprehensive. The book of Matthew is a primary documented that had been promulgated while eye witnesses were alive to validate it. This fact had been physically evinced in 1994 by scanning LASER microscopes. Matthew was written before 66 A.D. according to analyses of the Magdalen Papyrus, P64 fragments. Matthew's style resembled the shorthand skills of a tachygrapher. He had penned some of the longest versions of Jesus Christ's sermons. Textual analyses point to a Greek document that had been originally completed in Hebrew within five years of the crucifixion. Comparisons between translations of Matthew from various periods of history have consistently yielded a crucifixion darkness of three hours. The oldest descriptions were in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. They consistently claim three hours along with many of the younger, secular, primary documents.

The diverse primary and tertiary documents recorded an incredible event. More recent document hint at similar reoccurrences. They could be rejected like the early accounts of meteors and tornadoes or could be examined for their heliophysical ramifications. Global stellar blackouts may not be beyond the attributes of solar models. Tcisco 06:32, 6 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This article's problems with neutrality arise out of its failure to include the views of objective biblical scholars. The first half of the article simply enumerates sources and presents us with a misplaced section on "time reckoning conventions." The second half then launches into an overlarge section on "crucifixion eclipse models." Missing from all of this is scholarship on the sources themselves. The two-sentence section on "Historicity" does not begin to fulfill this need.

Most scholars of the sources in question do not take the synoptic stories of darkness literally. Instead, they understand these stories as references to "one of the cosmic phenomena often associated with the Day of Yahweh in the Old Testament" (Fitzmyer, "The Gospel According to Luke," p. 1517). In other words, the talk about darkness is one of the means by which the Synoptic authors attempt to associate the passion of Jesus with Old Testament prophecies, and shouldn't be taken as observation-based "on-the-spot reporting" by eyewitnesses (P. Benoit, "Passion and Resurrection," as cited by Fitzmyer. On this see also M. Rese, Alttestaemntliche Motive, and the various sources these scholars cite).

Another point: Luke just talks about the sunlight "failing." That's a pretty vague reference. Could cloud cover, for example, account for a failure of sunlight? Who's to know if we don't cite any good scholarship on the Luke passage in question? And Mark and Matthew just mention unspecified darkness, which could mean almost anything. Even if we're going to be naive and take these sources at their word, it is worth noting how vague our earliest sources for this event are. In neglecting to do so, this article puts the cart before the horse.

I vote for discarding much of the material here, redirecting Crucifixion eclipse to Death and resurrection of Jesus (which already has a more abbreviated discussion of the darkness), and editing the discussion there to include a few brief remarks speculation about the "eclipse," and scholarship surrounding the relevant passages in Mark, Matthew, Luke, and any other ancient sources.

ECKnibbs 13:15, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Astronomical records of the time

The Egyptians and the Greeks were brilliant astronomers and there are no records that support a 3 hour darkness at that time in that region other than Christian texts. Bearing in mind that the New Testament also records that the graves were opened and many saw resurrected saints (again not recorded elsewhere) this article must reflect the fact that the vast majority of academics do not take this as a record of an actual historical event. Currently this article looks like OR mixed with apologetics. Sophia 22:27, 15 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"Time reckoning conventions" section removed here

I have taken the following text out of the article (formerly the first section). Much of this material is irrelevant to the discussion that follows. Perhaps a small portion of these sentences should be reincorporated later, but for now I think it's less confusing to do without them. In any case, the article should open with a discussion of sources.

Recorded descriptions of the crucifixion eclipse were expressed in terms of the Roman time reckoning system. Judea, like many Mediterranean nations, was under the rule of the Roman Empire at the time of the crucifixion, circa 33. Judeans measured time in terms of the Roman twelve divisions of daylight: hours. (Division of the day into 24 hours is attributed to the Egyptians, specifically the reign of Mentuhotep III.) The first hour occurred at sunrise; the twelfth occurred at sunset; noon, the sixth hour, occurred when the sun reached its highest point in the sky; and the ninth hour corresponded to midway between noon and sunset. The length of an hour would vary with the seasons. It could be twenty minutes during the winter and ninety minutes in the summer. It was close to sixty minutes during the crucifixion, which was either Nisan 14 or 15. According to Duncan (1998, p. 48), the Roman soldiers announced the third hour of the morning (tertia hora), the sixth of midday (sexta hora), and the ninth of the afternoon (nona hora). Biblical and extra-biblical records indicate the darkness commenced when the Sun was at zenith, the sixth hour, and radiance resumed when the sun was approximately forty-five degrees above the horizon, the ninth hour.

Witnesses of the crucifixion darkness could distinguish between short and long events. Ancient cultures tracked the passage of time by pointing to specific positions of the sun in the sky (Aveni, 1995, 90-92). The witnesses did not need a sundial or hourglass to know when the sixth and ninth hours had occurred. Praying at three-hour intervals was an old Jewish practice (Richards, 1998, p. 44).

ECKnibbs 14:07, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]