";s:4:"text";s:13203:"When they could see the new crescent Moon in the evening (only visible for a short time in the early evening) they would send runners to announce that the new month had begun. Required fields are marked *. However, this is scientifically impossible. The Olympiades can be used as a useful means of establishing a time-line. The 202nd Olympiad. The fourth year of the 202nd Olympiad I believe would include some of the same year as the 203rd Olympiad but the new Olympiad did not start till the Olympics event took place in the Summer. Assume Jesus died Friday afternoon about 3 PM as we reckon time today. This information was considered reliable at the time because Origen (in 248 CE) quoted it to refute Celsus (Against Celsus II:14,33,59), a Greek philosopher very critical of Christianity but familiar with history. We have already cited the Acts of the Apostles, the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, Tertullian, Africanus, the 1st century historian Thallus, and the 2nd century historian, Phlegon, and these sufficiently demonstrate the historicity of the Crucifixion darkness. But what has an eclipse in common with an earthquake, the rending rocks, and the resurrection of the dead, and so great a perturbation throughout the universe? [CDATA[*/ var d = new Date(); var n = d.getFullYear(); document.getElementById('getYear').innerHTML = n; /*]]>*/ Christian Evidence. There are some uncertainties in the Olympiad numbering system but it seems from various sources the fourth year of the 202nd Olympiad would be either AD 32 or AD 33. Yet there has not been a good consensus among scholars about the exact date of the crucifixion. In the verses above, Peter cites a scripture which speaks of various signs which God did by Him, inclusive of thesun being darkenedand the moon turning red. On Marvels consists of "anecdotes culled from sources as diverse as the Greek poet Hesiod and the Roman natural historian Pliny the Elder. One problem with AD 30 being the crucifixion is that it does not allow enough time for Jesus ministry. I would not always agree with him on some interpretational points but he does well in analyzing the crucifixion date question. He was smartly dressed, flamboyant and gregarious. Jerusalem is another place where we might have expected there to be records of the events of Matthew 27, and to hope that individual residents of Jerusalemcontemporaneous to the eventsmight have commented on these wondrous happenings in personal records, etc. Jerome (4th century) is quoting Phlegon's 13th book which is a translation of a historical chronicle on the 202nd Olympiad by Eusebius. Part II: The Role of the Church, Roma Locuta Est Considers: Benepapism and the Munus vs. Ministerium (EpisodeV), Is the Culture of Death creating the Remnant: Part 1 Declining births and life expectancy, Roma Locuta Est Considers: Benepapism and the Munus vs. Ministerium (EpisodeIV), Roma Locuta Est Considers: Benepapism and the Munus vs. Ministerium (EpisodeIII), 10th Anniversary of Benedict XVIs Renunciation of the Papacy, A Rebuttal of Dr. Mazzas book on Pope Benedicts Resignation, Valid? With this principle in mind, let us now consider the evidence. The time from Friday 3 PM to sunset was counted as one day. [3]. Thus the New Moon is not visible. But consider how do we know anything about history? Are you sure that you will enter heaven to be with God in the afterlife? Check your inbox or spam folder to confirm your subscription. 27:63, Mark 8:31, Mark 9:31, Mark 10:33-34, and John 2:19. From historical sources telling when these individuals were in office you can show that the possible range of years of the crucifixion to be from AD 26 to AD 36. https://creation.com/darkness-at-the-crucifixion-metaphor-or-real-history, http://www.icr.org/article/greatest-earthquakes-bible/, http://www.nbcnews.com/id/47555983/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/quake-reveals-day-jesus-crucifixion-researchers-believe/#.Wiu9sUqWaUk, http://www.wall.org/~aron/blog/darkness-at-noon/. He takes the Bible at face value rather than questioning the details in Scripture in some way, which I believe is the right approach. This information would be every unlikely to have been added at a later time due to its specificity in time. Im fairly confident of the historical source, Your email address will not be published. In his book Chronicle of the Olympiad he records a miracle mentioned in the New Testament. 3: 32-07-28/29: Athene : 4: 32- . We believe that the event referred to by Phlegon is the same event that is recorded in the New Testament. Seeing as Phlegon was born approximately in the second century, it is extremely unlikely he spoke with an eyewitness of either eclipse. Modern context of the calendar of ancient Olympics would put the 4th year of the 202nd Olympiad at July 32-33AD. ? someone heckled from the back row. [The word Christ in Hebrew is Messiah.] Christ bore our sins so that if we just turn to God through Christ and humble ourselves and repent we receive Gods forgiveness for all of our sins!! Zero as a mathematical number in the Greco-Roman world was a later invention. First, there are differences between the synoptic gospels in the New Testament and the gospel of John that have puzzled Bible scholars. To recap, according to Eusebius' Chronicon tables, the 2nd year of the 202nd Olympiad is equated alongside the 16th year of Tiberius. Here, the skeptics case isseeminglymore plausible on first glance. The year given by Phlegon for this eclipse is the fourth year of the 202nd Olympiad (i.e., 33 A.D.), which is consistent with one of the possible dates of the Crucifixion (i.e., April 3, 33 A.D.). And calculation makes out that the period of 70 weeks, as noted in Daniel, is completed at this time. Julius Africanus, Chronography, 18.1. To God nothing is impossible. 1 Maier, Paul. But Peter standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice, and spoke to them: Ye men of Judea, and all you that dwell in Jerusalem, be this known to you, and with your ears receive my words. Being written within a dozen years of the Crucifixion, many of Matthews readers would have been witnesses to the three hour darkness which had fallen over the earth (cf Matthew 27: 45) years before. The first of the two speakers stepped forward again. Or will you go to the place of separation from God in the afterlife? Adding these figures up, we find that Jesus began proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of heaven when he was 33 years old. In telling the story of the guards, Matthew takes into account what his Jewish audience would already knowi.e., there was aclaimbeing spread abroad that the body of Jesus had been stolenand then he proceeded to provide facts to explain the true origin of that lie. Please note, I do not believe that this eclipse is connected with the crucifixion. Between 3 PM and sunset the Jews had to prepare the body and get it into the tomb, because the Sabbath started Friday evening around sunset. The heavens are telling of the glory of God; And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands. . Or has it been changed and contaminated by ambitious Christian defenders? whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. Sure, there is a degree of speculation as to whether this actually was an occurrence during the Crucifixion (I fully realize there a 10-year swing is 3650-ish days according to modern calendar, which means a .0274% chance that it was on the actual day), but here again is evidence that the transcription from ancient origins thatPhlegon relied on and passed to writers who referenced his collected materials is scientifically plausible. Martinus Nijhoff. EARTHQUAKE AND DARKNESS THAT OCCURRED AT JESUS DEATH WAS RECORDED IN SECULAR HISTORY. Passover occurred on either Nisan 14 or 15 about two weeks after the New Moon. The difficulty in this is that it mentions three nights as well as three days. . Originally written in Aramaic, it was intended for a Jewish audience. Phlegon of Tralles was a first century secular Greek historian born not long after the Crucifixion. On this day, Christians recall especially that part of the Creed in which we affirm of Jesus Christ: for our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate, he suffered, died and was buried. These things we affirm to be historical facts. If his ministry was for 3 years, then he was crucified aged 36, and the darkness and earthquake would have occurred in that year of 36CE. (LogOut/ Colin Humphreys estimates that Jesus' ministry began in 30 A.D. The 202nd Olympiad has been calculated to run from July AD 29 to June AD 33. Some evidence suggests that Jesus was born in 2 BC and Herod died shortly after. Why would the Apostles allude to a darkness their hearers and readersknewdid not happen? 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. Of all these verses, only Matt. Therefore the year of the crucifixion is A.D 33. and a seismic event that happened sometime between the years 26 and 36. The placement in time within the text is just too precise. In 70 A.D., just forty years after the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the city of Jerusalem and the Temple were utterly destroyed by the Romans and the surviving population carried off into captivity. . Even with the loss of the original writing, if the transposition of the original to the copy were to be altered, there would be significant doubt as to when the event occurred, or if, it even occurred. Yes, to God, nothing is impossible. Only one earthquake in this span of years came up in the results, in 33 AD The database showed two published geological sources regarding this earthquake. From all the information above I believe there is a fairly strong convergence of evidence that Christ's crucifixion was in April of 33 AD. While the actual words used by Thallus no longer survive, the response of Africanus (below) give us a sense of what he must have said: As to His (i.e., Jesus Christ) works severally, and His cures effected upon body and soul, and the mysteries of His doctrine, and the resurrection from the dead, these have been most authoritatively set forth by His disciples and apostles before us. The speaker continued The 53rd chapter of Isaiah, written over 700 years before the birth of Christ, describes the most important aspect of the ministry of Jesus Christ!! VI, p. 130, as cited in Gary R. Habermas, The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ, (Joplin, MO: College Press Publishing Company), 1996., 3 Habermas, Gary. Another issue to notice in Jerome's quote above is regarding an earthquake that took place at the same time as the mysterious darkening of the sky. Suffice it to say that the Jewish Sabbath was on Saturday and remember that the Jews considered a 24 hour day cycle to begin at sunset in the evening. Pratt, John, webpage by astronomer John Pratt on Isaac Newtons approach to determining the date of the crucifixion. The sedimentation rate puts this second earthquake about 65 years after the 31 B.C. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and manifest day of the Lord come. Why has it been so difficult to determine the exact date of Jesus' death and the dates of the last week of his life? 4th year of the 202nd Olympiad. Every person needs to deal with the questions of who Jesus is and what his death means. The next piece of the puzzle is to determine if Jesus indeed was crucified on a Friday. We do however have important sections of Phelgon's work, which are critical in dating the Crucifixion. In either case, many would have witnessed it. To me it seems the place to start with deduction from all the available information is with John the Baptist. And accurate. Thesestatements reveal several key things: 1. Origen tells us in his work,Against Celsus(cf Contra Celsus II, 14), that Phlegon had some knowledge of Jesus. The written testimony from outside the Bible confirms some of the main events, people, and places mentioned in the New Testament. The expression "three days and three nights" then becomes a special idiom that had a different meaning to the Jews than the way we would use it today. He inadvertently dated the darkness at noon on the day of Crucifixion in his work, The Olympiades. . Even more fascinating is the mention of an earthquake. Is there any evidence of global or regional darkness in 36CE? This is especially significant I think because no other significant earthquakes turned up in Israel for the entire range of years from 25 to 35 AD. So how should we understand the statement about Jesus being dead three days and three nights? He wrote extensively about natural phenomena earthquakes and such. He was athletically built and his firm, steady voice brought the audience to a hush. I speak of the midday or Crucifixion darkness which the gospel accounts assert fell over the earth between noon and 3 pm. Tradition informs us that Marks gospel derives directly from Peters oral preaching in Rome (seehere). I did a search for the years 25 through 35 AD for the nation of Israel. ";s:7:"keyword";s:33:"fourth year of the 202nd olympiad";s:5:"links";s:153:"Fuzzy Pea Pods,
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