I'd be somewhat interested to know what exactly was the phrase in bible.
Like you'd think if there was an eclipse during the crucifixation of Jesus that would be shown more in Jesus media. I'd imagine people could think that would mean more and it would be easier to turn people Christian, so why omit it?
Matthew 27:45 "Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour."
Mark 15:33 "And when the sixth hour was come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour."
Luke 23:44 "And it was about the sixth hour, and there was a darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour."
No mention of it in John, but John is definitely the loosest of the three, even if the most poetic.
John is widely regarded to be the least historically reliable of the gospels, being more influenced by Jewish Wisdom literature or hellenic philosophy. Other theories about the relationship between Matthew, Mark and Luke (also called the synoptic gospels) - generally it's held that Mark was the first, there's lots of very interesting debate about the relationship between them and other potential lost sources. My NT theology is rusty as shit, but it was good fun to learn about years ago.
I'm not deep into the topic, mostly informed by Religion for Breakfast, but IIRC it was about the people who copied each of those three taking the other two as reference, right?
The general consensus is the Matthew and Luke are based on Mark and the Q Source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_source
John is significantly different enough to not be directly based on any of these sources.
I'd like to point out that there is not much consensus on Q source being real. There are plenty of very smart historians who will argue each side of the debate. Matthew and Luke being based on Mark, however, is pretty much undisputed.
It's called that because some random as-of-yet unidentified dude on 4Chan claimed to have "Q-level clearance" (not a thing to my knowledge)
Yes. People genuinely believe them.
Many many times. That actually reminds me of a time in high school where I got a test back and the teacher said she couldn't read my handwriting. For some reason she thought it was a good idea if I copied it myself in a more readable font, *at home*. So I did what any good student would do.
I corrected my own work but left some mistakes on purpose. When I got it back she claimed she knew what I did. I asked her how she was going to prove that as she couldn't read my initial handwriting. Got a 7.7/10 on the test.
It's usually dated around the 90s AD, which is 60 years after Jesus died. 110ish is usally the latest date theorized (still a far cry from "over a hundred years"), some scholars even prefer an earlier dating, as far back as the 70s.
”John reached its final form around AD 90–110,[7] although it contains signs of origins dating back to AD 70 and possibly even earlier.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_John
You are rigth that it sometimes is estlmated to the 90s but not always, i did however still overestimate the ammount of time that had passed. The important part is still that the author(s?) of John was very likely not there when Jesus was crucified.
The four separate gospel accounts are actually all reflective of Christ in his ministry here on the earth:
Matthew represents Christ as a King
I can’t remember what Mark represents him as (maybe priest??)
Luke represents him as a prophet
John represents him as a friend, which is why John’s account is so different from the others
Yes, it is. I was in the total eclipse path this year. It's not like it's total darkness, but it's *very* noticeably darker than it should be for hours. It goes from like very thick cloud cover style darkness even with no clouds around (like this most of the time), to being like walking under constant shadow in the evening, to straight up night during the day, then it fades back through those until the eclipse is over. It took about 3-4 hours for it to be completely done, 1-3/4 pm, iirc.
if exceptionally dark clouds rolled in for 3 hours during the crucifixion of jesus (also in a desert climate) it would still be pretty noteworthy, and a lot more plausible than a 3 hour long eclipse.
Right, probably either a sandstorm or a literary invention.
The written texts are all in agreement that Jesus was crucified at Passover, which is in the spring. This isn't like Christmas, which was blatantly moved to the winter by the Church, likely to supplant Saturnalia/Yuletide. Easter has a much older established tradition and the details simply don't line up with the eclipse hypothesis.
Strong disagree but maybe it can vary. This recent eclipse I was directly in the path of totality and it was significantly darker for a couple hours around the main event. Like all the automatic streetlights turned on kinda dark, lol.
I was also in the totality. It was straight up evening levels of dark (including significant temperature drop) for several hours with it going totally dark for several minutes.
Luke:
The Death of Jesus
44 It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, 45 for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. 46 Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”[a] When he had said this, he breathed his last.
Mark:
The Death of Jesus
33 At noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. 34 And at three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).[a]
Both are huge exaggerations of the duration of the eclipse (but that's mythology for you) tho idk why it's not depicted as much
While that is an emotionally moving notion, it's only one interpretation and is not universally accepted.
The other interpretation is that He was deliberately referencing a verse from the Old Testament / Torah.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_God,_my_God,_why_hast_Thou_forsaken_me%3F
I mean, that's entirely possible and I wouldn't discount it. I personally wouldn't call the argument "desperate", if only because the notions of "Christ as an infallible deity" and "Christ as a person with the full spectrum of human emotions" both exist in Christian thought and in many cases aren't even necessarily mutually exclusive.
That is, incidentally, my own interpretation: people will, every day, use cultural references and even name-drop famous media to express their own strong emotions (including strong ones like grief and fear) and there's no reason to assume that people in antiquity were any different.
I've always wondered why the bible seems to have formatting markers left in the body of the text. I don't know of any other works with numbered paragraphs.
I kinda do, tho. I'd be like "Senecus book IV, 6-7" or "Cic, Cat, I, 3-6". It's common for classical texts, it make quoting and finding stuff easier. (The whole shtick of numbering pages is a very, very modern concept and a table of contents is a late-middle age concept.)
The phrase that most of the popular ones use is “At noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon.“ it’s a single sentence that doesn’t really stand out tbh
In Catholic school the message we got was that a huge storm rolled in and the clouds blocked out the sunlight (because god was so mad they did the thing he knew would happen when he put Jesus on earth, I guess?). So I always understood “the sky went dark” to mean more like how it feels before a storm, never imagined an eclipse.
Christian holidays were formatted around other holidays to make it more pallettable. Easier to have your God worshiped if his days is your Gods day also. People today even put driedels on christmas trees
Sure some holidays like Christmas were set around other holidays to make it more palatable, but other Christian holidays just followed what was written in the New Testament. Like, Easter followed Jewish Passover as the last supper took place during that week, Pentecost happened during Shavuot (a harvest feast) according to Acts etc.
Most religeous holidays are also centered around the natural phenomenon like the solstice, and equinox. Just makes things easier since most religeon is sun worship+
Oh it’s definitely a pretty big part of the story! Most Christians know this. A weirder part that gets overlooked is that one of the gospels mentions a bunch of dead people coming to life at that same time. That seems like a pretty crucial piece of lore to overlook.
People nowadays wouldn't just turn Christian because an eclipse happened at the same time jesus was supposedly crucified. People know, and have known for a long time, that it's a perfectly natural phenomenon and not an act of god.
>Like you'd think if there was an eclipse during the crucifixation of Jesus that would be shown more in Jesus media
I mean the most popular depiction of Jesus is as a white blue eyed man in the middle east so...
Also, at least according to Catholics, a lot of the accusations of Christian holidays appropriating Pagan celebrations to gain followers were started and spread by puritanical Protestants to justify the persecution of Catholics as "converted Pagans" because celebrations like Christmas and Easter weren't detailed in the Bible. Like you said, these were season feasts and Christmas in particular, which people often attribute to appropriating and changing Saturnalia (one of the many crimes of the Big Bang Theory) was meant to celebrate the conception of Jesus rather than his birth, but that context has gotten pretty lost in history. But most of this was sourced from my having attended CCD as a child/adolescent so this may not be entirely factual or accurate.
Nah, you can have celebrations that are secular yet not pagan. Farmers in particular have practical, non-spiritual reasons to care about season changes.
I can't comment on whether that's the origin of any given Christian holiday though.
I mean at the time period we're talking about there isn't really such a thing as secular. Farming practices in particular were bound up with seasonal and traditional ritual that would probably fall under the umbrella of pagan for most historians
Yeah, the notion of “secular” didn’t really exist until like The Protestant Reformation lol. To classify anything in the ancient world as secular is incredibly anachronistic
Just because they didn't have a word for it, nor blocked off large groups of things as it, doesn't mean you can't use the word. Secular just means something without a religious basis, and most holidays either are or were that at some point; the religious associations come later. That's the point they're making; they're not pagan because the holidays exist for non-spiritual reasons first, and *obtain* their spiritual elements over time depending on the specific culture celebrating them. All cultures have these celebrations because there's a common non-religious component, but the specifics vary because the longer the holiday exists, the more it will evolve. Some will be pagan, some will not.
There was no word in most cultures for blue until 4500 years ago, but I'm sure it still existed. They just didnt need to describe things that way very often. In the same way, we did not get the word secular until relatively recently, but that doesn't mean things weren't secular before that; it just means they didn't need the word.
What is the basis for the claim that most holidays did not have a religious basis? The understanding of things as being “religious” or “non-religious” is a very modern, and very Christian-inherited worldview. There was no word for secular, because “religion” was not a separate thing from any part of the cultural fabric. The supernatural was woven into every part of ancient peoples worldview. To say ancient holidays were non religious is like saying they were non cultural, it’s basically non sensical.
Like name ONE specific ancient holiday or festival that is secular
The reasons for this type of holiday ARE non-cultural; the holidays themselves are not. We're talking on two very different wavelengths here. If it was purely cultural, then it wouldn't be nearly universal; you wouldn't see the same core idea repeated irrespective of culture. The fact that so many cultures share this implies some shared underlying reason; something seperate from the culture it came from that's causing it to keep happening that way. These things don't usually just happen for no reason, even if the reason is simple.
In this case, the changing seasons demand pretty big changes to lifestyle. It means certain things need to harvested and other stores need to be emptied, it means the animals and resources you have access to are different, it may mean relocating or major changes/repairs to your dwellling, and it can mean a shift from storing to spending or vice versa. That's all a pretty big deal, and means you'll need a lot of hands doing a lot of things. There *needs* to be a holiday so people can keep track of the time, gather together to assign jobs and discuss needs, use up stores that'll go bad soon, prepare stores you'll need soon, plan for the upcoming season, etc. A culture that *doesn't* develop some sort of major holiday around changing seasons is at a huge disadvantage, and that's not even considering the morale component.
Now, yes, of course the people are going to assign spiritual significance to it. They're going to have cultural associations with all of these components already, and those will show up in whatever holiday they wind up creating. The specifics will vary a lot and be rich with 'religious' implications. Part of their planning and gathering and feasting and prepping will involve ritual or worship or any other number of things, because to them those ideas are linked. The holidays will always have a great deal of spiritual meaning, and every individual holiday will have some unique cultural reason behind it.
The thing I'm driving at though is that those meanings will vary and diverge and change between peoples. The *existence* of the holiday at all is seperate from the *meaning and celebration* of the holiday, and it exists for reasons beyond just the spiritual meaning it's married to. That remains consistent regardless of what culture you're looking at. There is secular component underpinning it, whether people were aware of it at the time or not. This type of holiday belongs to no specific culture, pagan or otherwise; it belongs to all cultures because it is as old as all cultures, and will probably be created in any culture eventually due to secular reasons. It's only pagan if you're using the 19th century definition.
In other words, the holidays exist for natural, predictable reasons in addition to the supernatural reasons the people were thinking about. There's a shared secular driving force that encourages all cultures to arrive at some version of this idea, even if the specifics of how they get there are unique and intensely spiritual. It is secular because it is seperate from any *one* spiritual component; it can exist with any of them because it's a different kind of piece.
You're clearly not interested in actually talking about this, just in being argumentative and obtuse, but anyway. At this period of time, the farming calendar/solar calendar/seasonal change calendar is heavily featured in most pre-abrahamic traditions that would be academically classed as pagan. It falls under the pagan umbrella, in terms of historical classification. Christian holidays are typically centered around events in the life of Christ and the remembrance of various saints, not in seasonal or farming traditions. Any seasonal aspect is incidental in the Christian calendar; certainly not the focus.
It's convenient to place the festivals of a colonizing religion around existing celebrations; the Romans did this as a matter of course before the Empire even became Christian. (See, for example, the Minerva Sulis springs in the city of Bath - the colonizing Roman god was placed alongside the local goddess of the spring). It makes the populace more inclined to celebrate your new deity - after all, they were already celebrating anyway, so why not?
First of all, the whole "appropriation of paganism" thing is an idiotic view. It completely removes any autonomy from the pagans who, for the most part, at least at the time we are discussing, willingly converted to Christianity.
It's also simply untrue that Christian festivals are based on the life of Jesus and pagan ones on the seasons. Plenty of pagan festivals that might have been timed with the change of seasons were celebrating some kind of mythology. This is exactly the same as Christianity. Festivals loosely based on events that are part of the core lore of Christianity, timed with seasonal changes for economic reasons.
Reality is ignored in order to place the festivals at appropriate times. This might seem horrible, if you are dumb. Because all religion ignores reality and especially pagan ones.
Anyway, the pagan aspect was not the change of seasons it was the fact that the festivals were part of pagan religions and based on the mythologies of said pagan religions.
Because, while spiritual aspects get attached to just about everything, celebrating the seasons isn't inherently linked to any one religion. Quite literally every people with a recorded history celebrate the seasons, because they define life and work. Celtic Lughnasadh wasn't appropriating the Feast of Hathor from Ancient Egypt, they just both went "damn that's a good harvest, we should have a celebration about it."
The ancient Hebrews made theirs passover, Easter is celebrating an event that occurred during passover. There was no interaction there with separate, pagan celebrations. You can't put the claim on an idea observable almost anywhere on the planet to one group of cultures.
Yeah this is the issue with claiming that as “the actual date of the crucifixion” since the narrative of christs death is so intimately linked to Passover. Unless Passover was in winter that year then he wasn’t crucified in November.
NASA has a website that documents eclipses and blow me down, there was an eclipse on the November 24 29CE.
[https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEcat5/SE0001-0100.html](https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEcat5/SE0001-0100.html)
Interestingly though, if I'm reading it correctly, the actual eclipse happened in Qatar and wouldn't have reached Jerusalem. So make of that what you will
Edit: originally put BC
After looking around a bit online... it seems the idea with the dates "chosen" is Christmas and Easter being 9 months apart makes it theoretically possible for the date of conception and crucifixion to be the same - but at the same time there is no primary source mention in the Bible of when his birth was
we do actually know that he wasn't born on christmas tho. The bible says that shepards were out with their animals at night during that time, but during christmas it would be far too cold for that.
I wouldn't think it to be so cold in Jerusalem during Christmas, no? I mean, Google says it gets cold, but not cold enough that you couldn't do a lil sheparding.
I assume the combination of it being night and no proper insulating clothes, I assume it would be more likely during a season where the day is too hot for shepherding, so it's done at night. I'm no meteorologist, but sandals after sundown in the desert would probably suck for anybody.
But... shepherds mean sheep. Sheep mean wool. Wool is a fiber that's been used for clothing for millenia, and leather shoes are documented for *much* further back than 2000ish years.
Well, most spells don't use AC, but yeah. DnD would totally make "crucify" a spell.
If its not a feat, it is a spell. Because god forbid you try to do something that's a feat/spell you don't own.
Because after taking sentinel and using 1/5 of your possible levels, you can FINALLY stop someone from running past you. And forget about being proficient with a wooden chair if you don't have tavern brawler.
I think historians still debate what could be his birth, and for now, it was very much narrowed between 6 BCE and 6 CE. And even that is a speculation. Whoever told to a definite date was just mistaken or took one estimate out of many without consideration. Then again, believing blindly without questioning in what you read is very much a principle of religion
It’s certainly is an interesting theory, but the amount of evidence that this is when Jesus was crucified is as about as much as he being crucified on Easter. all the Gospels were written many years after Jesus’s death and they could’ve certainly used the evocative imagery of the eclipse from their memory and conflicted the dates from whenever it happened
Yeah like there isn't even a consensus if it was a lunar eclipse or solar eclipse, or even something like volcanic eruption, so to claim confidently it was this date and that the Catholic church are meanies for not accepting it, is bold
>Yeah like there isn't even a consensus if it was a lunar eclipse or solar eclipse
I mean, the writings that state the sky went dark also say that it happened during the day... You can only spectate a lunar eclipse at night.
But they also say the darkness lasted almost three hours, and the maximum a solar eclipse can last is about 8 minutes, but lunar eclipses can last that longish. And that it happened the day after a full moon, which isn't possible for a solar eclipse, as solar eclipses require new moons. Which is why this is a contested topic and there isn't a direct simple obvious answer. If there was one, it would have been found ages ago
It could be, now hear me out, an exaggeration. That's the direct and simple obvious answer. If we assume that it was a solar eclipse that happened and darkened the sky when Christ was crucified, that woukd feel incredibly significant to the people witnessing it who were already believing him to be a messiah. Of course they would embelish that moment
Or it could be exaggerated, even though one didn't occur during that moment, and the people writing about it later on wrote as if there was one to make the moment seem ethereal. I'm not saying it isn't exaggerated. But which parts are embellished and which parts are literal in the bible is a point of contention since the bible was written. Again, if it is as simple as you think it is and you can just assume one way, why would it be a contention all these centuries?
I'm just saying that saying the sky was dark for hours doesn't really disprove the possibility of a solar eclipse. Like I said, under the assumption that it was a solar eclipse, embellishment is a perfectly reasonable explanation for why it lasted so many hours. It also could have been not a solar eclipse. I was just making a point that because the Bible was written by people who wanted to bring a godly might to all these events, there's not really any way to prove or disprove literally any explanations
You are saying the same thing I am saying then lol. But I am also asking, why assume it was a solar eclipse in the first place, embellishment doesn't explain why a solar eclipse happened during a full moon week or how they could see a solar eclipse during Passover in Jerusalem in the Pontius Pilate reign when we know no solar eclipse occurred that matches those dates and location. There are as many inconsistencies to assume it was a solar eclipse, as to assume elsewise, and yes people exaggerate, that still doesn't really give one definite answer, which has been my point all along. You mentioned "hear me out, exaggeration is the answer" we don't know if it was and for which parts it was, that's the thing, there isn't a definite direct answer
The timing of a solar eclipse, from start to finish, is about 3 hours. And, having been in the path of the totality, I can tell you that there was a dimming of the light as the time passed, almost like "darkness rolled across the land". The totality itself only lasted minutes, but there was a definite decrease in the brightness in the lead up to the totality.
Add in a century of poetic description, and you can see how the idea of total darkness may have spread.
Idk why everyone is picking that point hahahahah I am not advocating for a lunar eclipse at all. My point from the start has been that it is contentious. Your point might be great, but again, solar eclipse during a full moon ain't physically happening so the point still is, shit is inconsistent no matter what you assume, there is no perfectly correct thing to assume
During the recent solar eclipse we were at the 85% totality. You could see the sun dimming from the start. And it definitely was "dark" for hours. The bird song stopped about an hour before totality and didn't come back until an hour after.
Was it completely "dark" not really, more deep twilight but the sun was definitely "darkened" for hours. It also got pretty chilly.
So it could simply be a linguistics issue. What does "dark" mean. Are we talking about the sun going out like a light switch then coming back on hours later? Or are we attempting to figure out what words a writer from almost 2000 years ago would use to describe an event they may not fully understand?
Seeing as Jesus was crucified during the day from 9am to 3pm or so I’d be surprised if someone in Jerusalem could witness a lunar eclipse while he was up there.
Nuh-uh. The entirety of Christian tradition was developed _specifically_ because of intentional, deliberate malice on the part of the Catholic Church. Also, that malice was specifically targeted at badass feminist girlboss witches who followed a religion identical to modern reconstructionist neopaganism. Jews, people of color, and Roma don't exist.
/s
Quite a lot of historical accounts that we take for granted were written a long time after the actual events. If we’re going to throw out even the basic facts of the Bible (forgetting of course all the magic) because of a lack of contemporary evidence, then we’d have to throw out most of history before, say, 1400.
This exactly. History isn't science because science relies on repeatable empirical evidence, which is literally impossible to do on the past. Historians have developed incredibly strong techniques for deriving textual evidence from analyzing texts to reveal similarities, inconsistencies, patterns, etc. This does reveal a lot of interesting results such as the patterns of authorship (most notably, Matthew and Luke being based on Mark and Q), the possibility of there being an oral tradition before being written down, locations of interpolations in the texts, etc. but it is *not* reason to cast doubt entirely on the historical basis of events described in the Gospels. The idea might be attractive to a layperson just learning about the levels of evidence involved, but it's based on an incredibly flawed misunderstanding of how history as a field works.
Okay, but historians generally don’t think that the man called Jesus was crucified in November.
If you are using the text as your source it is still probably around April due to Passover occurring just before, and it’s purely conjecture to link the dates just because a solar eclipse happened to occur.
As sick as that sounds, the romans did have a perfectly good understanding of what a solar eclipse was and how to predict them. So I don’t think they were that spooked.
It’s more like if I was in Jesus’ position I’d ask for my execution to be timed with some ominous weather phenomenon or cosmic alignment. As my last wish.
If I have to die, I prefer doing it with proper ambiance.
Still, even if they knew- you telling me you wouldn’t freak the fuck out if they executed the guy saying he was god and then a solar eclipse happened around the time of his death?
Eclipses can be accurately predictable centuries in advance, so I don’t think anyone who was into astronomy was caught off-guard.
The rest though, it might’ve been a little more ominous for them xD
Here's the problem: Easter has nothing to do with pagan holidays. The Bible also makes it clear that the last days of Jesus' life happened during Passover, and in basically every European language aside from English, the word for Easter is derived from *pesach*, the Hebrew name for Passover.
And yes, there was a solar eclipse in that same year. But I want you to tell me which is more likely: that later writers conflated that year's eclipse with the crucifixion out of a sense of "big events should happen at the same time," or that a group of devout Jews would forget when Passover was.
I certainly know which one I'm going with.
To be fair, whether something is pagan or not is relative. To the Romans of the time, Christianity was pagan. Easter was a pagan holiday to them.
Hell, in the eyes of the Romans, Christians were atheists.
Also, it's unlikely that any of the gospel writers were Jewish.
So solar eclipses were actually well known in the past, to the point we've been predicting them for over 2500 years, dating back at minimum to Ancient Greece. To Romans, solar eclipses being predictable would be as normal as it is to us today.
They're also clear that it happened during Passover. There are so many better explanations for this than a solar eclipse, such as a desert sandstorm or just a literary invention; the eclipse doesn't even line up with the described events.
What if the eclipse actually happened on a different day than the crucifixion and the writers of the bible were just like "wouldn't it be cool if those things had happened at the same time?", and then just retconned the crucifixion
could have been just a huge storm
I saw one of those IRL. it was like 11am and it was raining so hard, it was darker than at night (since at nigh there's streetlights but at 11am there were no streetlights).
Immediately deciding this is true not bc of scientific accuracy but because it would have been metal as fuck.
Also the idea that the Romans timed it for dramatic effect is hilarious to consider, bc they knew what eclipses were.
Don't think the Passover was in November so it's more like scientists trying to butt in when no one asked and make assertions that don't make sense.
I know lots of people hate Christianity but if you're going to make snide criticisms maybe you should actually understand what people believe and why.
Yeah it's a cool tidbit that there was an eclipse but it's like... not at all related to anything surrounding the crucifixion. Like the entire story takes place over the whole week surrounding Passover, we're not confused about when it happened.
What's more likely to be made up? A dramatic story about the sky going dark (which can also be explained by clouds btw) or a hystorical record about a specific holiday which is absolutely crucial to the narrative, because it's tied to a historical practice of amnesty? I don't think the catholic church is the dumb one in this case.
It wasn’t a solar eclipse. The Bible says that it was a darkness that was felt, and neither of the ones I’ve seen got dark enough that it was felt.
Also, according to how the Jews conceptualized time, and how it states the darkness lasted from the sixth hour onto the ninth hour, neither the time nor the duration line up with the eclipse.
Also, yeah, Good Friday is also not the day he was crucified. It was done on a Wednesday. Calculating the time according to Jewish reckoning and accounting for the special feast day which would have occurred, if Easter Sunday is for sure the day he resurrected, then he would have had to have crucified on Wednesday.
It’s a fun post, but highly inaccurate :)
funnier idea, they did a real crucifxation but got scared as hell because of the eclipse, so they did an "oficial one" during easter
kinda like how some people get married in a private enviroment with the people they trust and then some time later they do a "show" wedding or whatever it is called that is a more clasical big wedding with all of the people that didn't came to the real one(? sdgsdfasd
I think it's more likely that the gospel writers (who were an entire generation removed from Jesus's death) knew there was an eclipse around that time and included it in their accounts for the literary and theological implications.
While it is true that Jesus disciples write about a darkness covering the land, it is important to note that the last meal Jesus had with them was the Passover meal. The Passover meal was an annual observance that fell on a *full moon* to commemorate the Israelites deliverance from Egypt. It was also always observed during spring
Additionally, the disciples report that a darkness covered the land from the "sixth hour" to the "ninth hour"- three hours. Solar eclipses, under ideal conditions, linger in totality for 7 and a half minutes at most
Not only was a solar eclipse during the Passover an astronomical impossibility (due to the full moon), it is also impossible for a solar eclipse to last three hours
This extraordinary darkness, along with an earthquake and the tearing of the sanctuary curtain, indicates an act of God, and not an eclipse
What about Joshua 10:12, where God stopped the movement of the Sun and Moon for a day?
Are there any historical records that coincide with this phenomenon?
I imagine it would have been terrifying if Jesus had ever actually claimed to be the son of God, but he never did. Thinking he ever said that is next-level ignorance.
I really love to imagine that Jesus did exist, but really was just some fuckin' dude.
Never claimed to be the son of God or anything, was just promoting love, fairness, and putting the carp in carpenter (bro loved his fish).
But then. Roman politicians, probably, decide he needs to be crucified for being a lovely guy or whatever. Solar eclipse on the day he's crucified, somehow survives the crucifixion, and comes back covered in bandages and robes so people think he's literally God.
Literal, "He is the messiah!" and, "I'm not the messiah!"
unlike Christmas, Easter isn't an appropriation of pagan holidays though...
and Easter is in the spring because that's when Passover is, and Jesus was crucified around Passover
Neither are appropriations of pagan holidays. It’s the other way around. There was a separate Christmas and Easter on different days and the Romans changed those dates to match their own holiday then rebranded them. They took away the original holidays and replaced them with pagan ones then disguised them as Christian holidays. This wasn’t a way for Christians to destroy paganism. It was a way for the Romans to control an empire.
Ok, but it’s more likely someone used that to embellish a story. “Jesus gets crucified, and just a few weeks later the sun goes black!” Turns into “the sun went black immediately after Jesus got crucified!”
Legends twist and change to be more fantastical, but as much as the Church is full of shit, it doesn’t mean this eclipse in any way coincided with the execution of a guy. At most it might’ve been used to embellish the story
I'd be somewhat interested to know what exactly was the phrase in bible. Like you'd think if there was an eclipse during the crucifixation of Jesus that would be shown more in Jesus media. I'd imagine people could think that would mean more and it would be easier to turn people Christian, so why omit it?
Matthew 27:45 "Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour." Mark 15:33 "And when the sixth hour was come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour." Luke 23:44 "And it was about the sixth hour, and there was a darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour." No mention of it in John, but John is definitely the loosest of the three, even if the most poetic.
John is widely regarded to be the least historically reliable of the gospels, being more influenced by Jewish Wisdom literature or hellenic philosophy. Other theories about the relationship between Matthew, Mark and Luke (also called the synoptic gospels) - generally it's held that Mark was the first, there's lots of very interesting debate about the relationship between them and other potential lost sources. My NT theology is rusty as shit, but it was good fun to learn about years ago.
I'm not deep into the topic, mostly informed by Religion for Breakfast, but IIRC it was about the people who copied each of those three taking the other two as reference, right?
The general consensus is the Matthew and Luke are based on Mark and the Q Source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_source John is significantly different enough to not be directly based on any of these sources.
I didn't know (or remember) about the Q source, but it's SO interesting to me, thanks!
I'd like to point out that there is not much consensus on Q source being real. There are plenty of very smart historians who will argue each side of the debate. Matthew and Luke being based on Mark, however, is pretty much undisputed.
Is this why Q Anon is called that
It's called that because some random as-of-yet unidentified dude on 4Chan claimed to have "Q-level clearance" (not a thing to my knowledge) Yes. People genuinely believe them.
Q clearance is a real thing, it’s essentially the Department of Energy equivalent of Top Secret clearance.
Why didn’t someone just say that they had R level clearance and start saying their own stuff
Because what if someone with S level clearance started yapping?
No, but I'm sure one of them will find out about this eventually and weave it into their conspiracy mythology.
Maybe John couldn't write at the time, because it was dark and scary
Maybe he did write something but because it was dark and scary he couldn't for the life of him figure out what he wrote the next day.
Been there, done that
Many many times. That actually reminds me of a time in high school where I got a test back and the teacher said she couldn't read my handwriting. For some reason she thought it was a good idea if I copied it myself in a more readable font, *at home*. So I did what any good student would do. I corrected my own work but left some mistakes on purpose. When I got it back she claimed she knew what I did. I asked her how she was going to prove that as she couldn't read my initial handwriting. Got a 7.7/10 on the test.
That's a good grade man, good grade
The gospel of John was written over a hundred years after Jesus died
Ah, so there's your answer! Old man just forgot the details
John didn't write it.
Obviously. That's why it's not in his part
Can't trust ghostwriters smh
It's usually dated around the 90s AD, which is 60 years after Jesus died. 110ish is usally the latest date theorized (still a far cry from "over a hundred years"), some scholars even prefer an earlier dating, as far back as the 70s.
”John reached its final form around AD 90–110,[7] although it contains signs of origins dating back to AD 70 and possibly even earlier.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_John You are rigth that it sometimes is estlmated to the 90s but not always, i did however still overestimate the ammount of time that had passed. The important part is still that the author(s?) of John was very likely not there when Jesus was crucified.
is john stuck in a mimic
He couldn't fucking see the page he was writing on
the 6th hour of daylight to the 9th hour would correspond to about 11AM, yeah
The four separate gospel accounts are actually all reflective of Christ in his ministry here on the earth: Matthew represents Christ as a King I can’t remember what Mark represents him as (maybe priest??) Luke represents him as a prophet John represents him as a friend, which is why John’s account is so different from the others
If the darkness lasted 3 hours, that's not a natural solar eclipse
Yes, it is. I was in the total eclipse path this year. It's not like it's total darkness, but it's *very* noticeably darker than it should be for hours. It goes from like very thick cloud cover style darkness even with no clouds around (like this most of the time), to being like walking under constant shadow in the evening, to straight up night during the day, then it fades back through those until the eclipse is over. It took about 3-4 hours for it to be completely done, 1-3/4 pm, iirc.
Yeah I was in the 90-something percent area and it was like walking around wearing sunglasses for hours
dark for 3 hours? sounds more like a dark cloud rather than an eclipse which only lasts a few minutes
Pretty sure they'd seen clouds before... It's not something that warrants writing about.
if exceptionally dark clouds rolled in for 3 hours during the crucifixion of jesus (also in a desert climate) it would still be pretty noteworthy, and a lot more plausible than a 3 hour long eclipse.
I didn't consider the desert climate
Right, probably either a sandstorm or a literary invention. The written texts are all in agreement that Jesus was crucified at Passover, which is in the spring. This isn't like Christmas, which was blatantly moved to the winter by the Church, likely to supplant Saturnalia/Yuletide. Easter has a much older established tradition and the details simply don't line up with the eclipse hypothesis.
Totality only lasts only a few minutes, but the overall eclipse can easily last 3 hours
i've witnessed an eclipse, and it's only noticably darker for a little bit before and after totality
Strong disagree but maybe it can vary. This recent eclipse I was directly in the path of totality and it was significantly darker for a couple hours around the main event. Like all the automatic streetlights turned on kinda dark, lol.
I was also in the totality. It was straight up evening levels of dark (including significant temperature drop) for several hours with it going totally dark for several minutes.
I think they had a different time system at the time so hours were quite a bit shorter
The hours were just as long IIRC, it's just that they counted from dawn instead of midnight.
If it was Roman hours, they did twelve hours from dawn to dusk, then twelve hours from dusk to dawn, regardless of how long the Sun was actually up
Important thing to recognize is that “6th hour” is not 6am the “first hour” would be when the sun rose. 6 hours after that would be ~11am
They're all incredibly loose, with most originating at a questionable amount of time after Jesus.
Luke: The Death of Jesus 44 It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, 45 for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. 46 Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”[a] When he had said this, he breathed his last. Mark: The Death of Jesus 33 At noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. 34 And at three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).[a] Both are huge exaggerations of the duration of the eclipse (but that's mythology for you) tho idk why it's not depicted as much
>“Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” >"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” SOAD reference
Always knew Jesus was Armenian
I'm not a Christian but I think Christ himself losing his faith in the Father is incredibly moving. Even the Son of God was human and afraid.
While that is an emotionally moving notion, it's only one interpretation and is not universally accepted. The other interpretation is that He was deliberately referencing a verse from the Old Testament / Torah. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_God,_my_God,_why_hast_Thou_forsaken_me%3F
That kinda feels like people desperately keeping to the whole "Christ was infallible" thing.
I mean, that's entirely possible and I wouldn't discount it. I personally wouldn't call the argument "desperate", if only because the notions of "Christ as an infallible deity" and "Christ as a person with the full spectrum of human emotions" both exist in Christian thought and in many cases aren't even necessarily mutually exclusive. That is, incidentally, my own interpretation: people will, every day, use cultural references and even name-drop famous media to express their own strong emotions (including strong ones like grief and fear) and there's no reason to assume that people in antiquity were any different.
The totality is quite brief yes, but 3 hours is at least within the right ballpark for how long an entire eclipse event lasts from start to finish.
I've always wondered why the bible seems to have formatting markers left in the body of the text. I don't know of any other works with numbered paragraphs.
It's so people can find specific paragraphs.
I kinda do, tho. I'd be like "Senecus book IV, 6-7" or "Cic, Cat, I, 3-6". It's common for classical texts, it make quoting and finding stuff easier. (The whole shtick of numbering pages is a very, very modern concept and a table of contents is a late-middle age concept.)
Cool, thanks! Maybe Jesus was like "I'll time my death to an eclipse so they'll perhaps make an awesome eclipse to be my new religions symbol!"
To quote Mushroomhead "in the next big religion, I'm doing the cross thing".
The phrase that most of the popular ones use is “At noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon.“ it’s a single sentence that doesn’t really stand out tbh
In Catholic school the message we got was that a huge storm rolled in and the clouds blocked out the sunlight (because god was so mad they did the thing he knew would happen when he put Jesus on earth, I guess?). So I always understood “the sky went dark” to mean more like how it feels before a storm, never imagined an eclipse.
Christian holidays were formatted around other holidays to make it more pallettable. Easier to have your God worshiped if his days is your Gods day also. People today even put driedels on christmas trees
Sure some holidays like Christmas were set around other holidays to make it more palatable, but other Christian holidays just followed what was written in the New Testament. Like, Easter followed Jewish Passover as the last supper took place during that week, Pentecost happened during Shavuot (a harvest feast) according to Acts etc.
Most religeous holidays are also centered around the natural phenomenon like the solstice, and equinox. Just makes things easier since most religeon is sun worship+
Oh it’s definitely a pretty big part of the story! Most Christians know this. A weirder part that gets overlooked is that one of the gospels mentions a bunch of dead people coming to life at that same time. That seems like a pretty crucial piece of lore to overlook.
People nowadays wouldn't just turn Christian because an eclipse happened at the same time jesus was supposedly crucified. People know, and have known for a long time, that it's a perfectly natural phenomenon and not an act of god.
Uh huh. Uh huh. So you're saying the sun is mad at us and demands a sacrifice, or else it won't return.
It did in Barabbas (1961), which was shot during an actual eclipse! [link](https://youtu.be/hpEPTrsYD_o?feature=shared)
>Like you'd think if there was an eclipse during the crucifixation of Jesus that would be shown more in Jesus media I mean the most popular depiction of Jesus is as a white blue eyed man in the middle east so...
[check this out](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpEPTrsYD_o)
It wouldn't be appropriation of a pagan holiday, it'd follow the Jewish Passover/Pesach. The last supper took place during this week.
This whole "pagan appropriation" shtick glosses over the fact that these are season change feasts and everyone back then was a farmer.
Also, at least according to Catholics, a lot of the accusations of Christian holidays appropriating Pagan celebrations to gain followers were started and spread by puritanical Protestants to justify the persecution of Catholics as "converted Pagans" because celebrations like Christmas and Easter weren't detailed in the Bible. Like you said, these were season feasts and Christmas in particular, which people often attribute to appropriating and changing Saturnalia (one of the many crimes of the Big Bang Theory) was meant to celebrate the conception of Jesus rather than his birth, but that context has gotten pretty lost in history. But most of this was sourced from my having attended CCD as a child/adolescent so this may not be entirely factual or accurate.
> celebrate the conception of Jesus Sounds like God's gettin' some!
Why is that glossing over? It's the whole point that they were seasonal change feasts, that's the pagan aspect of it
Nah, you can have celebrations that are secular yet not pagan. Farmers in particular have practical, non-spiritual reasons to care about season changes. I can't comment on whether that's the origin of any given Christian holiday though.
I mean at the time period we're talking about there isn't really such a thing as secular. Farming practices in particular were bound up with seasonal and traditional ritual that would probably fall under the umbrella of pagan for most historians
Yeah, the notion of “secular” didn’t really exist until like The Protestant Reformation lol. To classify anything in the ancient world as secular is incredibly anachronistic
Just because they didn't have a word for it, nor blocked off large groups of things as it, doesn't mean you can't use the word. Secular just means something without a religious basis, and most holidays either are or were that at some point; the religious associations come later. That's the point they're making; they're not pagan because the holidays exist for non-spiritual reasons first, and *obtain* their spiritual elements over time depending on the specific culture celebrating them. All cultures have these celebrations because there's a common non-religious component, but the specifics vary because the longer the holiday exists, the more it will evolve. Some will be pagan, some will not. There was no word in most cultures for blue until 4500 years ago, but I'm sure it still existed. They just didnt need to describe things that way very often. In the same way, we did not get the word secular until relatively recently, but that doesn't mean things weren't secular before that; it just means they didn't need the word.
What is the basis for the claim that most holidays did not have a religious basis? The understanding of things as being “religious” or “non-religious” is a very modern, and very Christian-inherited worldview. There was no word for secular, because “religion” was not a separate thing from any part of the cultural fabric. The supernatural was woven into every part of ancient peoples worldview. To say ancient holidays were non religious is like saying they were non cultural, it’s basically non sensical. Like name ONE specific ancient holiday or festival that is secular
The reasons for this type of holiday ARE non-cultural; the holidays themselves are not. We're talking on two very different wavelengths here. If it was purely cultural, then it wouldn't be nearly universal; you wouldn't see the same core idea repeated irrespective of culture. The fact that so many cultures share this implies some shared underlying reason; something seperate from the culture it came from that's causing it to keep happening that way. These things don't usually just happen for no reason, even if the reason is simple. In this case, the changing seasons demand pretty big changes to lifestyle. It means certain things need to harvested and other stores need to be emptied, it means the animals and resources you have access to are different, it may mean relocating or major changes/repairs to your dwellling, and it can mean a shift from storing to spending or vice versa. That's all a pretty big deal, and means you'll need a lot of hands doing a lot of things. There *needs* to be a holiday so people can keep track of the time, gather together to assign jobs and discuss needs, use up stores that'll go bad soon, prepare stores you'll need soon, plan for the upcoming season, etc. A culture that *doesn't* develop some sort of major holiday around changing seasons is at a huge disadvantage, and that's not even considering the morale component. Now, yes, of course the people are going to assign spiritual significance to it. They're going to have cultural associations with all of these components already, and those will show up in whatever holiday they wind up creating. The specifics will vary a lot and be rich with 'religious' implications. Part of their planning and gathering and feasting and prepping will involve ritual or worship or any other number of things, because to them those ideas are linked. The holidays will always have a great deal of spiritual meaning, and every individual holiday will have some unique cultural reason behind it. The thing I'm driving at though is that those meanings will vary and diverge and change between peoples. The *existence* of the holiday at all is seperate from the *meaning and celebration* of the holiday, and it exists for reasons beyond just the spiritual meaning it's married to. That remains consistent regardless of what culture you're looking at. There is secular component underpinning it, whether people were aware of it at the time or not. This type of holiday belongs to no specific culture, pagan or otherwise; it belongs to all cultures because it is as old as all cultures, and will probably be created in any culture eventually due to secular reasons. It's only pagan if you're using the 19th century definition. In other words, the holidays exist for natural, predictable reasons in addition to the supernatural reasons the people were thinking about. There's a shared secular driving force that encourages all cultures to arrive at some version of this idea, even if the specifics of how they get there are unique and intensely spiritual. It is secular because it is seperate from any *one* spiritual component; it can exist with any of them because it's a different kind of piece.
You know that Abrahamic faiths also have seasonal change feasts and celebrations, right? The seasons changing mattered to everyone, not just pagans
did you just say that the seasons changing is a pagan thing?
Some people seem to think seasonal change or harvest feasts etc. are automatically pagan?
I saw Wicker Man I know what's up
seasons only change for pagans, actually, didn't you know?
No, I didn't
>seasonal change feasts, that's the pagan aspect So, feasts are pagan, not seasons. I see, that makes sense
You're clearly not interested in actually talking about this, just in being argumentative and obtuse, but anyway. At this period of time, the farming calendar/solar calendar/seasonal change calendar is heavily featured in most pre-abrahamic traditions that would be academically classed as pagan. It falls under the pagan umbrella, in terms of historical classification. Christian holidays are typically centered around events in the life of Christ and the remembrance of various saints, not in seasonal or farming traditions. Any seasonal aspect is incidental in the Christian calendar; certainly not the focus. It's convenient to place the festivals of a colonizing religion around existing celebrations; the Romans did this as a matter of course before the Empire even became Christian. (See, for example, the Minerva Sulis springs in the city of Bath - the colonizing Roman god was placed alongside the local goddess of the spring). It makes the populace more inclined to celebrate your new deity - after all, they were already celebrating anyway, so why not?
First of all, the whole "appropriation of paganism" thing is an idiotic view. It completely removes any autonomy from the pagans who, for the most part, at least at the time we are discussing, willingly converted to Christianity. It's also simply untrue that Christian festivals are based on the life of Jesus and pagan ones on the seasons. Plenty of pagan festivals that might have been timed with the change of seasons were celebrating some kind of mythology. This is exactly the same as Christianity. Festivals loosely based on events that are part of the core lore of Christianity, timed with seasonal changes for economic reasons. Reality is ignored in order to place the festivals at appropriate times. This might seem horrible, if you are dumb. Because all religion ignores reality and especially pagan ones. Anyway, the pagan aspect was not the change of seasons it was the fact that the festivals were part of pagan religions and based on the mythologies of said pagan religions.
Because, while spiritual aspects get attached to just about everything, celebrating the seasons isn't inherently linked to any one religion. Quite literally every people with a recorded history celebrate the seasons, because they define life and work. Celtic Lughnasadh wasn't appropriating the Feast of Hathor from Ancient Egypt, they just both went "damn that's a good harvest, we should have a celebration about it." The ancient Hebrews made theirs passover, Easter is celebrating an event that occurred during passover. There was no interaction there with separate, pagan celebrations. You can't put the claim on an idea observable almost anywhere on the planet to one group of cultures.
LOVE the username. And yeah. People have been throwing seasonal fiestas since they learned to count to four. It’s sort of What We Do.
Yeah this is the issue with claiming that as “the actual date of the crucifixion” since the narrative of christs death is so intimately linked to Passover. Unless Passover was in winter that year then he wasn’t crucified in November.
NASA has a website that documents eclipses and blow me down, there was an eclipse on the November 24 29CE. [https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEcat5/SE0001-0100.html](https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEcat5/SE0001-0100.html) Interestingly though, if I'm reading it correctly, the actual eclipse happened in Qatar and wouldn't have reached Jerusalem. So make of that what you will Edit: originally put BC
But like it's quite clear that the crucifixion took place during the Passover time, so it's not that hard to estimate when it happened.
After looking around a bit online... it seems the idea with the dates "chosen" is Christmas and Easter being 9 months apart makes it theoretically possible for the date of conception and crucifixion to be the same - but at the same time there is no primary source mention in the Bible of when his birth was
we do actually know that he wasn't born on christmas tho. The bible says that shepards were out with their animals at night during that time, but during christmas it would be far too cold for that.
I wouldn't think it to be so cold in Jerusalem during Christmas, no? I mean, Google says it gets cold, but not cold enough that you couldn't do a lil sheparding.
I assume the combination of it being night and no proper insulating clothes, I assume it would be more likely during a season where the day is too hot for shepherding, so it's done at night. I'm no meteorologist, but sandals after sundown in the desert would probably suck for anybody.
But... shepherds mean sheep. Sheep mean wool. Wool is a fiber that's been used for clothing for millenia, and leather shoes are documented for *much* further back than 2000ish years.
More timing coincidence: new years would have been jesus' bris. Just sayin'.
I remember from my study that Christ was born in 4 BC, so that would be consistent with him being dead at 33 years.
If Jesus was born in 4 BC, he could not be killed in 29 BC, by virtue of being –25 years old at the time.
It's a typo, the eclipse was in 29 AD. Edit: I wrote AC instead of AD
With an Armor Class that high, how did they even crucify him at all?
They were playing 3.5, mate. By level 20 even Christ's AC ain't shit.
Spells don't care about your ACs!
...aside from the fact that a lot of spells do, are you suggesting that "crucify" is a spell?
Well, most spells don't use AC, but yeah. DnD would totally make "crucify" a spell. If its not a feat, it is a spell. Because god forbid you try to do something that's a feat/spell you don't own. Because after taking sentinel and using 1/5 of your possible levels, you can FINALLY stop someone from running past you. And forget about being proficient with a wooden chair if you don't have tavern brawler.
yeah, but jesus saves
AC isn't a thing, it's AD which is either Anno Domini or After Death
Lol I translated literally from the Italian After Christ
Even the tumblr post says 24 CE, unfortunate typo to make
CE is common era it means AD no? Edit: ok I saw now you got it wrong.
Check again
I think historians still debate what could be his birth, and for now, it was very much narrowed between 6 BCE and 6 CE. And even that is a speculation. Whoever told to a definite date was just mistaken or took one estimate out of many without consideration. Then again, believing blindly without questioning in what you read is very much a principle of religion
I love how you can tell how old that site is not just by the incredibly dated graphic design, but by the fact they spell Web Site as two words
BC?
Maybe Qatar was in the path of totality? They would've probably still seen something in Jerusalem if that were the case
Did you mean to say BC?
It’s certainly is an interesting theory, but the amount of evidence that this is when Jesus was crucified is as about as much as he being crucified on Easter. all the Gospels were written many years after Jesus’s death and they could’ve certainly used the evocative imagery of the eclipse from their memory and conflicted the dates from whenever it happened
Yeah like there isn't even a consensus if it was a lunar eclipse or solar eclipse, or even something like volcanic eruption, so to claim confidently it was this date and that the Catholic church are meanies for not accepting it, is bold
>Yeah like there isn't even a consensus if it was a lunar eclipse or solar eclipse I mean, the writings that state the sky went dark also say that it happened during the day... You can only spectate a lunar eclipse at night.
But they also say the darkness lasted almost three hours, and the maximum a solar eclipse can last is about 8 minutes, but lunar eclipses can last that longish. And that it happened the day after a full moon, which isn't possible for a solar eclipse, as solar eclipses require new moons. Which is why this is a contested topic and there isn't a direct simple obvious answer. If there was one, it would have been found ages ago
It could be, now hear me out, an exaggeration. That's the direct and simple obvious answer. If we assume that it was a solar eclipse that happened and darkened the sky when Christ was crucified, that woukd feel incredibly significant to the people witnessing it who were already believing him to be a messiah. Of course they would embelish that moment
Or it could be exaggerated, even though one didn't occur during that moment, and the people writing about it later on wrote as if there was one to make the moment seem ethereal. I'm not saying it isn't exaggerated. But which parts are embellished and which parts are literal in the bible is a point of contention since the bible was written. Again, if it is as simple as you think it is and you can just assume one way, why would it be a contention all these centuries?
I'm just saying that saying the sky was dark for hours doesn't really disprove the possibility of a solar eclipse. Like I said, under the assumption that it was a solar eclipse, embellishment is a perfectly reasonable explanation for why it lasted so many hours. It also could have been not a solar eclipse. I was just making a point that because the Bible was written by people who wanted to bring a godly might to all these events, there's not really any way to prove or disprove literally any explanations
You are saying the same thing I am saying then lol. But I am also asking, why assume it was a solar eclipse in the first place, embellishment doesn't explain why a solar eclipse happened during a full moon week or how they could see a solar eclipse during Passover in Jerusalem in the Pontius Pilate reign when we know no solar eclipse occurred that matches those dates and location. There are as many inconsistencies to assume it was a solar eclipse, as to assume elsewise, and yes people exaggerate, that still doesn't really give one definite answer, which has been my point all along. You mentioned "hear me out, exaggeration is the answer" we don't know if it was and for which parts it was, that's the thing, there isn't a definite direct answer
The timing of a solar eclipse, from start to finish, is about 3 hours. And, having been in the path of the totality, I can tell you that there was a dimming of the light as the time passed, almost like "darkness rolled across the land". The totality itself only lasted minutes, but there was a definite decrease in the brightness in the lead up to the totality. Add in a century of poetic description, and you can see how the idea of total darkness may have spread.
Idk why everyone is picking that point hahahahah I am not advocating for a lunar eclipse at all. My point from the start has been that it is contentious. Your point might be great, but again, solar eclipse during a full moon ain't physically happening so the point still is, shit is inconsistent no matter what you assume, there is no perfectly correct thing to assume
During the recent solar eclipse we were at the 85% totality. You could see the sun dimming from the start. And it definitely was "dark" for hours. The bird song stopped about an hour before totality and didn't come back until an hour after. Was it completely "dark" not really, more deep twilight but the sun was definitely "darkened" for hours. It also got pretty chilly. So it could simply be a linguistics issue. What does "dark" mean. Are we talking about the sun going out like a light switch then coming back on hours later? Or are we attempting to figure out what words a writer from almost 2000 years ago would use to describe an event they may not fully understand?
Seeing as Jesus was crucified during the day from 9am to 3pm or so I’d be surprised if someone in Jerusalem could witness a lunar eclipse while he was up there.
Nuh-uh. The entirety of Christian tradition was developed _specifically_ because of intentional, deliberate malice on the part of the Catholic Church. Also, that malice was specifically targeted at badass feminist girlboss witches who followed a religion identical to modern reconstructionist neopaganism. Jews, people of color, and Roma don't exist. /s
Lmaooo
Quite a lot of historical accounts that we take for granted were written a long time after the actual events. If we’re going to throw out even the basic facts of the Bible (forgetting of course all the magic) because of a lack of contemporary evidence, then we’d have to throw out most of history before, say, 1400.
This exactly. History isn't science because science relies on repeatable empirical evidence, which is literally impossible to do on the past. Historians have developed incredibly strong techniques for deriving textual evidence from analyzing texts to reveal similarities, inconsistencies, patterns, etc. This does reveal a lot of interesting results such as the patterns of authorship (most notably, Matthew and Luke being based on Mark and Q), the possibility of there being an oral tradition before being written down, locations of interpolations in the texts, etc. but it is *not* reason to cast doubt entirely on the historical basis of events described in the Gospels. The idea might be attractive to a layperson just learning about the levels of evidence involved, but it's based on an incredibly flawed misunderstanding of how history as a field works.
Okay, but historians generally don’t think that the man called Jesus was crucified in November. If you are using the text as your source it is still probably around April due to Passover occurring just before, and it’s purely conjecture to link the dates just because a solar eclipse happened to occur.
As sick as that sounds, the romans did have a perfectly good understanding of what a solar eclipse was and how to predict them. So I don’t think they were that spooked.
Maybe they timed it intentionally for dramatic effect. They did love a bit of drama.
To the Romans, Jesus wasn’t particularly important.
I would definitely do that
You'd intentionally hype up the man you were killing as potentially having godly powers?
It’s more like if I was in Jesus’ position I’d ask for my execution to be timed with some ominous weather phenomenon or cosmic alignment. As my last wish. If I have to die, I prefer doing it with proper ambiance.
Still, even if they knew- you telling me you wouldn’t freak the fuck out if they executed the guy saying he was god and then a solar eclipse happened around the time of his death?
Eclipses can be accurately predictable centuries in advance, so I don’t think anyone who was into astronomy was caught off-guard. The rest though, it might’ve been a little more ominous for them xD
Lots of people were saying they were gods then.
People are even still saying it now.
Appropiation of pagan holidays?? It's dated that way because It happened in the JEWISH festivity of fucking PASSOVER
The classic “pegan Jews”
Here's the problem: Easter has nothing to do with pagan holidays. The Bible also makes it clear that the last days of Jesus' life happened during Passover, and in basically every European language aside from English, the word for Easter is derived from *pesach*, the Hebrew name for Passover. And yes, there was a solar eclipse in that same year. But I want you to tell me which is more likely: that later writers conflated that year's eclipse with the crucifixion out of a sense of "big events should happen at the same time," or that a group of devout Jews would forget when Passover was. I certainly know which one I'm going with.
To be fair, whether something is pagan or not is relative. To the Romans of the time, Christianity was pagan. Easter was a pagan holiday to them. Hell, in the eyes of the Romans, Christians were atheists. Also, it's unlikely that any of the gospel writers were Jewish.
So solar eclipses were actually well known in the past, to the point we've been predicting them for over 2500 years, dating back at minimum to Ancient Greece. To Romans, solar eclipses being predictable would be as normal as it is to us today.
That doesn’t really mean anything when you remember all the people screaming that it was the end of the world during the last eclipse.
That passage also states that it was dark for hours. Eclipses dont last si long.
They're also clear that it happened during Passover. There are so many better explanations for this than a solar eclipse, such as a desert sandstorm or just a literary invention; the eclipse doesn't even line up with the described events.
I mean, it could have been clouds too
What if the eclipse actually happened on a different day than the crucifixion and the writers of the bible were just like "wouldn't it be cool if those things had happened at the same time?", and then just retconned the crucifixion
Tumblr: should I look into *why* the church rejected it, or am I gonna take any excuse to dunk on the Church?
could have been just a huge storm I saw one of those IRL. it was like 11am and it was raining so hard, it was darker than at night (since at nigh there's streetlights but at 11am there were no streetlights).
Immediately deciding this is true not bc of scientific accuracy but because it would have been metal as fuck. Also the idea that the Romans timed it for dramatic effect is hilarious to consider, bc they knew what eclipses were.
This actually impossible, as eclipses like that can only really happen during a new moon, while Jesus was crucified the day after a full moon
Specifically, Jesus was crucified near Passover, which takes place right after the first full moon of spring. December is not in spring.
Don't think the Passover was in November so it's more like scientists trying to butt in when no one asked and make assertions that don't make sense. I know lots of people hate Christianity but if you're going to make snide criticisms maybe you should actually understand what people believe and why.
The church also heavily invests in astronomy. They already knew about this and rejected it as not being relevant
Yeah it's a cool tidbit that there was an eclipse but it's like... not at all related to anything surrounding the crucifixion. Like the entire story takes place over the whole week surrounding Passover, we're not confused about when it happened.
What's more likely to be made up? A dramatic story about the sky going dark (which can also be explained by clouds btw) or a hystorical record about a specific holiday which is absolutely crucial to the narrative, because it's tied to a historical practice of amnesty? I don't think the catholic church is the dumb one in this case.
For what it is worth, the historical practice of amnesty is not attested to outside of the Bible, so we only have their word for it.
They couldn’t spell Babylon. I’m sure not all the details are exactly right.
[No fucking way this was the post I got beneath this one](https://www.reddit.com/r/ContagiousLaughter/s/Tmr7Dqtcdo)
It wasn’t a solar eclipse. The Bible says that it was a darkness that was felt, and neither of the ones I’ve seen got dark enough that it was felt. Also, according to how the Jews conceptualized time, and how it states the darkness lasted from the sixth hour onto the ninth hour, neither the time nor the duration line up with the eclipse. Also, yeah, Good Friday is also not the day he was crucified. It was done on a Wednesday. Calculating the time according to Jewish reckoning and accounting for the special feast day which would have occurred, if Easter Sunday is for sure the day he resurrected, then he would have had to have crucified on Wednesday. It’s a fun post, but highly inaccurate :)
I love canon bible not fandom bible basically
funnier idea, they did a real crucifxation but got scared as hell because of the eclipse, so they did an "oficial one" during easter kinda like how some people get married in a private enviroment with the people they trust and then some time later they do a "show" wedding or whatever it is called that is a more clasical big wedding with all of the people that didn't came to the real one(? sdgsdfasd
I think it's more likely that the gospel writers (who were an entire generation removed from Jesus's death) knew there was an eclipse around that time and included it in their accounts for the literary and theological implications.
I would imagine the church response at the time was 'How dare you imply God couldn't just make it dark whether there was an eclipse or not!'
Jesus was trying to summon The Godhand
I'd shit
While it is true that Jesus disciples write about a darkness covering the land, it is important to note that the last meal Jesus had with them was the Passover meal. The Passover meal was an annual observance that fell on a *full moon* to commemorate the Israelites deliverance from Egypt. It was also always observed during spring Additionally, the disciples report that a darkness covered the land from the "sixth hour" to the "ninth hour"- three hours. Solar eclipses, under ideal conditions, linger in totality for 7 and a half minutes at most Not only was a solar eclipse during the Passover an astronomical impossibility (due to the full moon), it is also impossible for a solar eclipse to last three hours This extraordinary darkness, along with an earthquake and the tearing of the sanctuary curtain, indicates an act of God, and not an eclipse
This is the plot of A Knight in Camelot. Whoopi Goldberg played the role of Jesus but used the eclipse to get people to not execute her.
What about Joshua 10:12, where God stopped the movement of the Sun and Moon for a day? Are there any historical records that coincide with this phenomenon?
Wait wasn’t Jesus supposedly crucified when he was 34? What’s up with the 5 year difference?
Eh, that could also mean it was stormy, if the sun got covered I feel like they'd specify that instead of just saying that it was dark during the day
I imagine it would have been terrifying if Jesus had ever actually claimed to be the son of God, but he never did. Thinking he ever said that is next-level ignorance.
I really love to imagine that Jesus did exist, but really was just some fuckin' dude. Never claimed to be the son of God or anything, was just promoting love, fairness, and putting the carp in carpenter (bro loved his fish). But then. Roman politicians, probably, decide he needs to be crucified for being a lovely guy or whatever. Solar eclipse on the day he's crucified, somehow survives the crucifixion, and comes back covered in bandages and robes so people think he's literally God. Literal, "He is the messiah!" and, "I'm not the messiah!"
unlike Christmas, Easter isn't an appropriation of pagan holidays though... and Easter is in the spring because that's when Passover is, and Jesus was crucified around Passover
Neither are appropriations of pagan holidays. It’s the other way around. There was a separate Christmas and Easter on different days and the Romans changed those dates to match their own holiday then rebranded them. They took away the original holidays and replaced them with pagan ones then disguised them as Christian holidays. This wasn’t a way for Christians to destroy paganism. It was a way for the Romans to control an empire.
So Jesus died at 29 and NOT 33? Hm
Quick, stab him
Ok, but it’s more likely someone used that to embellish a story. “Jesus gets crucified, and just a few weeks later the sun goes black!” Turns into “the sun went black immediately after Jesus got crucified!” Legends twist and change to be more fantastical, but as much as the Church is full of shit, it doesn’t mean this eclipse in any way coincided with the execution of a guy. At most it might’ve been used to embellish the story
no joke, i've only ever heard of this fact for watching berserk. and only because i knew griffith is supposed to represent the antichrist