CHAPTER 8

THE "OLYMPIADES" OF PHLEGON

    The darkness that covered the land of Israel for three hours was recorded by three of the Gospel writers.

Matthew 27:45 "Now from the 6th hour there occurred darkness over all the land until the 9th hour."

Mark 15:33 "Now when the 6th hour had come, it became dark over all the land until the 9th hour."

Luke 23:44-45. "It was now about the 6th hour, and darkness came over all the land until the 9th hour, the sun failing."

    The combined testimony of the three evangelists is that the darkness lasted for three hours, and that in extent it "covered all the land". No doubt in the process of time people from different places in the land of Israel conferred together and found that the darkness was of this extent geographically.

    Luke gives us a most useful additional piece of information. He says that "the sun failed." The Greek words in this place read TOU HELIOU EKLEIPONTOS. Heliou is genitive of HELIOS, the Sun. Ekleipontos is the Genitive Singular, Present Participle of the verb, and it comes from EKLEIPO, meaning "to fail", or "to come to an end." Translated strictly it is, “the failing of the sun.”

    So much for the analysis of the phrase. Luke was saying in effect that the cause of the darkness was a strange and unaccountable failure in the Sun’s light. This distinguishes the event from the mere darkness of dense thunderheads that sometimes cause day to assume near-night-time conditions. But storms of that sort are unusual for Palestine, especially at Passover time, and even if it were an unusual storm, it would not have lasted three hours. Furthermore, there would have been some mention of prodigious rainfall, but nothing was said. 

    Luke in fact used a word that gave rise to our present word ECLIPSE, an astronomical event, the cause of which lies beyond the confines of the Earth’s atmosphere. But this is where care needs to be exercised; because some expositors have fallen into the trap of thinking that the strange darkness was caused by an extended eclipse of the Sun. Nothing could be further from the truth. I say "further from the truth" advisedly, because an eclipse of the Sun only occurs when the Moon is directly between the Sun and us, thus blocking out its light. And on this particular afternoon, between Noon and 3 p.m., the Moon was on the FAR side of the Earth away from the Sun, so much so that it gave rise to a partial ECLIPSE OF THE MOON!

    There can be no possibility of an eclipse of the Sun that day. Furthermore, no eclipse of the Sun can last more than SEVEN AND A HALF MINUTES in any one place, and this strange darkness lasted for THREE HOURS. Hence, the cause of the darkness, though astronomical, cannot be attributed to the Moon, or any source that we are aware of. Something must have intruded its way into a position between the Earth and the Sun and cut off the light. To suggest a cause would take us far away from our present study, however interesting the possibilities might be.

    We are left with the understanding that for three hours a strange darkness covered the land. Everything was still. The sky was clear, and possibly here and there a few stars appeared, well away from the Sun’s direction. Birds would have gone to roost, and people would be asking themselves whether "the end of the world" had come. The Jewish people would know from their Bible readings that "the day of the Lord" was going to be "a day of darkness", and in Amos 8:9 were found the very appropriate words, "On that day, says the Lord God, I will make the Sun to go down at noon, and darken the Earth in broad daylight. I will turn your feasting into mourning, and all your songs into lamentations, and I will bring sackcloth upon all loins and baldness on every head, I will make it like the mourning for an only son, and the end of it like a bitter day."

   A portion of this prophecy certainly was fulfilled at the crucifixion. The remainder awaits the time depicted in Zechariah, when God will pour out upon His ancient people the spirit of mourning.

    Before proceeding further, I must warn readers that if they turn to The New English Bible, the Moffatt Translation, or the 20th Century New Testament, they will find Luke’s words rendered "the sun was in eclipse." This is a sad reflection on the scholarship of those responsible for the translation, where Theology and Linguistics have been divorced from true Science. It has already been explained that although the Greek word is the root from which we obtain ECLIPSE, there was no way for that to occur on the day of the crucifixion. Hence the Authorised Version was perfectly in order to say, "the sun failing." In Luke 22:32 we find Jesus saying to Peter, "I have prayed for you that your faith fail not." The same word is found in the Greek, and its meaning is abundantly clear in this context.

    There were other early writers to mention this strange darkness. Tertullian (at the beginning of the 3rd century) and Lucian (the martyr of Nicomedia, who died in A.D. 312) appealed to the testimony of national archives then in existence that a supernatural darkness prevailed at the time of the crucifixion.

    Julius Africanus, a Christian historian, writing about A.D. 221, made this interesting comment about the long darkness. "Thallus, in his third book of histories, explains away this darkness as an eclipse of the sun - unreasonably as it seems to me." Thallus was a Samaritan-born historian, and one of the first Gentiles to mention Christ, writing in A.D. 52. Sadly his writings have not been preserved, other than a few quotations from the pen of later writers. Julius Africanus saw the unreasonableness of Thallus’s statement, classing it as a bit of loose thinking, a factor that obtains in the present day as well!

    Julius Africanus then mentions another source, that of Phlegon of Tralles, (a town in Asia Minor near Ephesus.) The words he quoted were as follows, "During the time of Tiberius Cæsar an eclipse of the sun occurred during the Full Moon."

    Thankfully we have a more detailed excerpt from Phlegon’s histories, known as OLYMPIADES. The reference may be found in Fragmenta Historicum Græcorum (C. Muller) 1841- 1870, Volume 3, pages 603 - 624, with the portion we are interested in on page 607. It reads as follows - "In the 4th year of the 202nd Olympiad, there was a great eclipse [Greek = EKLEIPSIS] of the Sun, greater than had ever been known before, for at the 6th hour the day was changed into night and the stars were seen in the heavens. An earthquake occurred in Bythinia and overthrew a great part of the city of Nicæa."

    This quotation was also mentioned by Origen in "Contra Celsum" (ii.33), and by Eusebius in his CHRONICON PASCHALE, edition du Cange, pages 219 - 222. Hence it was well known in those early days, even though the testimony to the date is now considered by some to be spurious, as for example in Hastings Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels, Volume 1, page 414a, where the writer says that "it comes from some unreliable Christian source."

    However, in 1732 William Whiston (who translated the works of Josephus) wrote an article entitled "Testimony of Phlegon Vindicated", and in more recent times scholars have added to Whiston’s work by determining the dates of the Olympiads more definitely, as well as eliminating the absurdities of non-scientific writers. But before we deal with the Olympiads, let me quote yet another historical source, that of Philopon, who said, "And about this darkness - - Phlegon recalls it in the Olympiads."

ADDITIONAL NOTE ON PHLEGON OF TRALLES

            Phlegon was a Greek historian who was born not long after the crucifixion, and lived until near the middle of the second century. He was a Freedman of the Emperor Hadrian. His greatest task was in the writing of history, which he composed under the title of OLYMPIADES, in other words he used the Olympiads as a useful means of establishing a time-line. This work must have been of monumental size, but sadly we have the merest fragments left to us as quotations from the works of other writers.

            Origen, himself a voluminous writer, had read and studied all of Phlegon’s works, as may be seen from the following quotation, taken from CONTRA CELSUM (Book 2, Chapter 14.)  Celsus was a strong critic of the supernatural element in the Gospels.  “Now Phlegon, in his 13th (or 14th book, I think) of his Chronicles, not only ascribed to Jesus a knowledge of future events (although falling into confusion about some things which refer to Peter, as if they referred to Jesus) but also testified that the result corresponded to his predictions. So that he also, by these very admissions regarding foreknowledge, as if against his will, expressed his opinion that the doctrines taught by the fathers of our system were not devoid of divine power.”

            And in the same work, Origen refers to Phlegon twice more, as follows, (Book 2 Chapter 33)  “And with regard to the eclipse in the time of Tiberius Cæsar, in whose reign Jesus appears to have been crucified, and the great earthquakes which then took place, Phlegon too I think has written in the 13th or 14th book of his Chronicles.”  And in Book 2 Chapter 59, “He [that is, Celsus] imagines also that both the earthquake and the darkness were an invention, but regarding these, we have in the preceding pages made our defence, according to our ability, adducing the testimony of Phlegon, who relates that these events took place at the time when our Saviour suffered.”

 

These extracts have been obtained from the following sources -

1.   “Fragmenta Historicum Græcorum” (iii) pages 602 - 624

2.   “Paradoxographi”  (A Westermann, 1839) pages 197 - 212

3.   “Rerum natural script. Græc. Min. (1877)  pages 57 - 105.

 

            The town of Tralles was situated amongst the “Seven churches of Asia” addressed in the early chapters of the Revelation by John the Apostle. The accompanying map will show its location, not too far from Ephesus, and on a strong position on the north side of the Mæander River Valley. (See map on next page.) The modern town of Aydin, population about 9,000, inherits its wealth and commercial advantages. The town was first mentioned by the Athenian historian and philosopher Xenophon (428 - 354 B.C.). It was an important town in the Hellenistic and Republican periods, and during the early period of the Empire it received a large body of Italian inhabitants and gained the epithet “Cæsarea”. Its organisation and cultus are relatively well known from the numerous coins and inscriptions.

 

            Phlegon, as a young man in his twenties or early thirties could have been around when the Apostle Paul was preaching in the Area. We have no direct knowledge of this, but it remains a distinct possibility. If this were the case, then he would have been under the sound of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. However, from fragments quoted by Origen, he doesn’t seem to have obtained a very accurate knowledge of the facts.

 

            We do know that there was a thriving Christian community at Tralles,  to which Ignatius, 2nd Bishop of Antioch wrote in his “Epistle to the Trallians”. This is still extant, and well worth reading to obtain some knowledge of the people who resided there. But beyond that we have no further facts to draw from on the life of Phlegon.

(End of additional note)

    In the next chapter we shall have to draw together all the threads of information presented thus far. But one final comment will not be out of place here. In history there have been two other occasions when a strange supernatural darkness has covered large regions of the Earth’s surface. The first occurrrd just before the Exodus, and lasted, not three hours, but an incredible three days! And in the Book of Exodus, we are told that the Israelites had light in their dwellings, so that the region of Goshen, in the Nile Delta, was exempt from the judgement of darkness, whereas the more southerly region, the city where Pharaoh dwelt, was immersed in thick darkness.

    The other event in history occurred on May 19th A.D. 1780, and covered a large area of northeastern United States. It is well documented, even though few have heard about it. It lasted from 11 a.m. until about 2 a.m. the following morning. There are certain strange astronomical connections between these three occurrences, each of which happened at or near to the full moon.

    The Moon’s orbital plane lies at 5 degrees from the Ecliptic. If the plane were to correspond exactly with the Ecliptic, then there would be eclipses every month. But an eclipse can only occur when the Moon crosses the plane of the Ecliptic.

     By referring to tables of eclipses, one can deduce the period of Lunar Eclipse Cycles. The smallest cycle is known as a Saros, and is 18 years, 10 days and 8 hours in length. Following the progress of these 18 year cycles, one finds that the magnitude of the eclipses tends to wax and wane in a regular fashion, beginning with the merest fringe of eclipse, and ending in the same way. These sequences may last up to 1,000 years.

     After examining the shapes of the graphs of adjacent series, I found no correspondence until the eighth series was obtained. Now here is a most interesting fact. By plotting the series that contained the Crucifixion eclipse of A.D. 33, and placing it side by side with the one that contained the dark day of 1780, they were of identical shape, being separated by an octave, and furthermore each eclipse was the 18th in the series. Clearly there was some connecting factor between these two dark days, even if we cannot as yet find a credible reason for the darkness.

     I have called this recurrence over the period of 1747 years, and comprising the octave, the Grand Saros. It consists of 638127 days.  To my knowledge, there is no mention of it in any other astronomical writing.

     The Julian Day Number of April 3rd 33      is 1733204
                               and that of May 19th 1780 is 2371331
            The difference between these JDNs is 638127 days.

     This amazing coincidence may ultimately lead to an understanding of the cause of dark days. Furthermore, by examining the Exodus darkening, it may be possible to establish a date for the event purely by astronomical means, a task that has never before been approached from this angle.