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What marvelous events occurred at the time of the crucifixion?
Matthew: “There was darkness over all the land” (xxvii, 45). “The veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent; and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose” (51, 52).
Mark and Luke: “There was darkness over the whole land” (Mark xv, 33). “And the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom” (38).
Mark and Luke know nothing of two of the important events related by Matthew; John is ignorant of all of them. Had these events really happened, the naturalists and chroniclers of that age would have recorded them. As they make no mention of them, we know that they did not occur.
If we accept the claims of their followers, nearly all the gods and heroes of antiquity expired amid the convulsions of Nature. The soul of Romulus went out amid the battling of her elements; “the sun was darkened and the sky rained fire and ashes” when the Hindu Krishna left his saddened followers; “the earth shook, the rocks were rent, the graves opened, and in a storm which threatened the dissolution of the universe,” Prometheus closed his earthly career; a pall of darkness settled over Egypt when her Osiris died; the death of Alexander was succeeded by six hours of preternatural gloom; and—
“Ere the mighty Julius fell,
The grave stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets.”