Did the sky really go dark as biblical inerrantists insist?

Many years ago I was one of the members of the Glen Burnie Volunteer Fire Department. One summer afternoon the phone rang, I answered and the voice on the other end said "Hurry! The whole world's on fire."Click.Well, it was daytime so using the normal night time test (roll over, put hand on wall, and if wall not hot, fire not near you so go back to sleep) wouldn't work. I did the only thing I could, turned to the watch Captain and said, "Bunky, the whole world's on fire and we better get there quick!"Being the brilliant commander he was he immediately jumped into action, turned in his old cracked red leather chair, pointed to the youngest, most enthusiastic vollie in the room and said, "Go climb up the hose tower and see what's going on."Now the hose tower was the place where we hung the fire hoses after use to allow them to dry out. It is about six stories tall, and the only way up was a narrow steel ladder that ran up one side, then through a trap door at the top.Pretty soon we heard the sound of feet just slapping the rungs as the young man came rushing down the ladder, pounding across the concrete floor and up the steps to the office."Man, the whole world's on fire", he panted.Once he got his breath back we gathered that from the roof of the tower he could see a really wide band of smoke over towards Friendship airport. Since it was impossible to see the source, or the distance and there were two main roads over that way, Bunky sent the field truck over towards one of the roads, Number 1 pumper over towards the better road and notified the surrounding companies that we had what appeared to be a large field fire, location unknown and asked them to send their field trucks and all the Indian Tanks they had available to the station and standby.Since there was little we could do at the time, most of us just sat around, waited for the help to arrive and one of the trucks to call in to give us a location. The first of the other companies, Marley VFD, showed up and we began filling the Indian Tanks (definitely a device of Satan) they had brought along and lashing them on top the hose bed.Pretty soon the radio crackled and a voice came through the static, "Holy Sh*T, the whole world's on fire. Come quick." Then silence.Needless to say, the whole world was not on fire, and the next transmission did tell us which truck and where the fire was and in about fourteen hours it was out and in another few hours all was washed up, hoses hung up to dry, engines hosed down and back in the bays and life went boringly on.In the excitement of the moment though, folk often describe events in terms of grandure and scope that sometimes exceeds reality.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

I doubt anyone would question if you said it was likely a local event. To assert that it is world-wide would need some corroborating information. It is that evidence which is lacking. It is the same issue as the alleged great wetting. There were lots of folk around at the time the flood supposedly happened. None of them, including the Egyptians who were very familar with flooding, noticed.To assert a world-wide darkining you need to find reliable reports that can verify the event. Something of the magnitude you assert, a sudden darkening that lasts for three hours and then goes away should have been unusual enough that EVERY society over about half the globe should have recorded it. It's not the kind of thing that just gets covered on page ten.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Where in any of that is a contemporary account? What is needed is something produced around 33AD that supports the story. Things written 100 years later or 300 years later don't add much weight. And to even limit to the Med covers a pretty broad area. We should see repots from Gibralter to Tunis, Ahwaz to Nubia, in Greece, in Rome.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

What makes you think no one questions the origin of Platos works? Further, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. What does that have to do with any of this discussion? When Plato writes about the cave, does anyone imagine that he is refering to some literal cave?Sorry, but that argument is just a non-starter.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

What in the world does that mean? You keep throwing in comments like that as though they had any meaning, anything to do with the conversation or any value in the debate or reality.We are on the science side of the aisle. To support something over here you really need to bring some verifiable info.Here is the assertion as I understand it.At sometime in the spring of a year likely between 30AD and 35AD, there was an earthquake in the area around Jerusalem at about 3PM. In addition, on the very same day the sky was darkened significantly from around 3PM to 6PM.Okay, earthquakes are pretty common in the area so the earthquake is the kind of thing that likely no one would record. I am not at all surprised that what is described as a very small, minor earthquake went unnoticed and unrecorded.However, the sky darkening for a three hour period should not just have been noticed, it would have been front page news.I can understand there not being any record of Jesus crucifixion, it was no big deal at the time, certainly not the kind of thing anyone would note, not news.But the sky darkening would. It should have been not just page one, but above the fold. That would be news. We should have reports from Greece, Rome, Egypt, Tarsus, Tyre, Cana, Bethlehem, Ahwaz and Ahbadan, literally hundreds and hundreds of reports on something like that.They don't seem to exist.If it happened, there should be records, lots and lots of contemporary records. That is the kind of thing that drives calendars, that leads to myth, that is memorable.Where is that evidence?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Remember we really don't know when the crucifixion took place.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Different story. This is just on the issue of crucifixion and it is not at all unlikely that happened. Unfortunately though we really don't know when it really was, just as we don't really know when Jesus was born.It is entirely possible that the crucifixion really was in what we today would assign to 29AD. That still leaves the issue of Passover, but it is certainly within the realm of possibility that since the stories we are going from were written down many, many years later and from recollection, that the real eclipse, some real eathquake and the memory of the crucifixion might all get lumped together.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion