September 7, 2024

—Since Jesus likely died in 33 A.D., and most historians date the writings of Thallus to around 50-55 A.D., then Thallus is the earliest known non-Christian writer to mention Jesus by name, and to do so within seventeen years of Jesus’ life and death.

In fact, Thallus, like the Gospel writers, may have been an eyewitness of both the darkness and the earthquake that accompanied Jesus’ crucifixion,of which he wrote. Like the overwhelming majority of all ancient literature, Thallus’ original works have been lost to us, but fortunately Julius Africanus, a Christian historian who lived and wrote around 220 A.D., quotes from Thallus.

—According to Matthew’s account of the crucifixion of Jesus, “from the sixth hour until the ninth hour there was darkness over all the land” (Matt. 27:45), and following Jesus’ death “the earth quaked and the rocks were split” (v. 51), prompting the centurion in charge of Jesus’ execution to conclude, “Truly this was the Son of God” (v. 54). Not everyone who observed these events connected the dots as did this centurion. Clearly many assumed that both the darkness and the earthquake, though verified by the writings of secular historians like Thallus (and later Phlegon), were nothing more than natural phenomena and not God’s purposeful and miraculous intervention into the events of that day.

—However, writing almost two hundred years later, Julius Africanus argued that these events did in fact have divine timing and tremendous theological significance. His Christian faith, his confidence in the Bible and the historical records of these events as chronicled by men like Thallus led him to that conclusion, and here’s what he wrote, “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.”

—Julius points out too that an eclipse of the sun does not comport with the timeline of the events of the Gospels, for Jesus was crucified at the time of the Passover, which falls each year on Nisan 15, a date on which the moon is always full. The earth always stands between the moon and the sun when the moon is full, so the darkness of Matthew 27:45 cannot be explained by an eclipse. As a result, Thallus is yet one more early secular source for the historicity of Jesus and the events recorded by the Gospel writers.

—Daniel McCabe