Julius Africanus on Thallus and Phlegon: the darkness at the crucifixion

c. AD 221 (Africanus); Thallus earlier, date disputedSextus Julius Africanus (citing Thallus and Phlegon)

A fragment of Julius Africanus’s lost Chronography. He says Thallus explained the darkness at the crucifixion as an eclipse, objects that no eclipse is possible at Passover full moon, and cites Phlegon’s report of an eclipse under Tiberius.

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About this witness

Sextus Julius Africanus was a Christian scholar from Palestine whose Chronography, in five books, completed around AD 221, set biblical and world history on a single timeline. The work is lost; it survives in fragments quoted by later writers, especially the Byzantine chronicler George Syncellus (c. 800). Fragment XVIII discusses the Passion and its date.

Africanus reports that Thallus, ‘in the third book of his History’, called the darkness at the crucifixion an eclipse of the sun. Thallus’s work is lost, and his identity and date are disputed; some place him in the mid-first century, others later. Africanus objects that a solar eclipse cannot happen at Passover, when the moon is full.

He then cites Phlegon of Tralles, a freedman of Hadrian who compiled a chronicle of the Olympiads in the second century, for a full eclipse of the sun from the sixth hour to the ninth in the time of Tiberius. Whether Phlegon himself connected his eclipse with the full moon or with Jesus is doubtful; the identification is Africanus’s.

The original wording and context of Thallus and Phlegon are not preserved, so whether they independently confirm a worldwide darkness is a question for the reader to weigh. What they show is that, by the second century, the Gospel darkness was known and discussed, and that writers were already trying to fix it in world chronology.

Thallus calls it an eclipse

This darkness Thallus, in the third book of his History, calls, as appears to me without reason, an eclipse of the sun.

Africanus, Chronography fr. XVIII.1

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Phlegon’s eclipse under Tiberius

Phlegon records that, in the time of Tiberius Cæsar, at full moon, there was a full eclipse of the sun from the sixth hour to the ninth—manifestly that one of which we speak.

Africanus, Chronography fr. XVIII.1

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The text

The opening section of fragment XVIII of Africanus’s Chronography (Ante-Nicene Fathers vol. 6), the only part that mentions Thallus and Phlegon. Africanus’s following calculations of Daniel’s seventy weeks, and the other fragments, are omitted.

Chronography, fragment XVIII

On the Circumstances Connected with Our Saviour’s Passion and His Life-Giving Resurrection.

XVIII.1

As to His 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. On the whole world there pressed a most fearful darkness; and the rocks were rent by an earthquake, and many places in Judea and other districts were thrown down.

This darkness Thallus, in the third book of his History, calls, as appears to me without reason, an eclipse of the sun. For the Hebrews celebrate the passover on the 14th day according to the moon, and the passion of our Saviour falls on the day before the passover; but an eclipse of the sun takes place only when the moon comes under the sun. And it cannot happen at any other time but in the interval between the first day of the new moon and the last of the old, that is, at their junction: how then should an eclipse be supposed to happen when the moon is almost diametrically opposite the sun? Let that opinion pass however; let it carry the majority with it; and let this portent of the world be deemed an eclipse of the sun, like others a portent only to the eye.

Phlegon records that, in the time of Tiberius Cæsar, at full moon, there was a full eclipse of the sun from the sixth hour to the ninth—manifestly that one of which we speak. 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? Surely no such event as this is recorded for a long period. But it was a darkness induced by God, because the Lord happened then to suffer. And calculation makes out that the period of 70 weeks, as noted in Daniel, is completed at this time.

Notes

Source of the fragment. Preserved by Georgius Syncellus, Chronographia, p. 322 (or 256 in another edition), according to the translator.

“A portent only to the eye.” Greek hen ti kata ten opsin.

SourceJulius Africanus, Extant Fragments of the Chronography, Ante-Nicene Fathers vol. 6; CCEL — https://www.ccel.org/ccel/s/schaff/anf06/cache/anf06.txt LicencePublic domain Cited asR31 R32

People and places in this text

Tiberius2 Hadrian1