Thallus on the Darkness at the Crucifixion

Thallus was a 1st-century historian whose three-volume Histories included a reference to darkness occurring at the time of Jesus's crucifixion, which he attempted to explain as a solar eclipse. His work survives only in fragments quoted by later authors, most importantly by the Christian chronographer Sextus Julius Africanus (ca. 221 AD), whose text is itself preserved through the 9th-century Byzantine chronicler George Syncellus. The critical fragment reads: "This darkness Thallus, in the third book of his History, calls, as appears to me without reason, an eclipse of the sun." Africanus argued that the eclipse explanation was scientifically impossible because a solar eclipse cannot occur during a full moon — and Passover, when the crucifixion took place, always falls at full moon. If Thallus was indeed referencing the darkness described in the Gospels (Matthew 27:45, Mark 15:33, Luke 23:44-45), this would be the earliest known non-Christian reference to an event associated with Jesus's death, written within approximately 20 years of the crucifixion. The fact that a pagan historian acknowledged the darkness and sought a naturalistic explanation — rather than denying it occurred — is significant. However, substantial scholarly debate exists over whether Thallus actually mentioned the crucifixion at all, or merely recorded an eclipse that Africanus later connected to it.