“THE SUN DARKENED.”
Humboldt selects the following example from historical records as to the occurrence of a sudden decrease in the light of the Sun:
A.D. 33, the year of the Crucifixion. “Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land till the ninth hour” (St. Matthew xxvii. 45). According to St. Luke (xxiii. 45), “the sun was darkened.” In order to explain and corroborate these narrations, Eusebius brings forward an eclipse of the sun in the 202d Olympiad, which had been noticed by the chronicler Phlegon of Tralles (Ideler, Handbuch der Mathem. Chronologie, Bd. ii. p. 417). Wurn, however, has shown that the eclipse which occurred during this Olympiad, and was visible over the whole of Asia Minor, must have happened as early as the 24th of November 29 A.D. The day of the Crucifixion corresponded with the Jewish Passover (Ideler, Bd. i. pp. 515–520), on the 14th of the month Nisan, and the Passover was always celebrated at the time of the full moon. The sun cannot therefore have been darkened for three hours by the moon. The Jesuit Scheiner thinks the decrease in the light might be ascribed to the occurrence of large sun-spots.