If you ever read Matt. 27:45 "At noon darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. " You may think it was more than an eclipse (average darkness takes no more than 8 min).
It might look exagerated, it could be thought as the climax a writer wanted to show up animating the mute nature but, could that be real?
I read a bit, searched the Internet and found out a simulator that served me to "calculate" it was probable during His lifetime.
file:///T:/Saros/Eclipse%20Simulation%20Software.htm
There are factors to ponder before saying "it was true, I believe it!".
These are:
a) We don´t know the amount of continental orogenic movements this planet has suffered during these last 2000 years (we know this recent present, not that past)
b) We don´t know any astronomic change the moon might had experienced during or afterwards such event the Bible lightly recorded as true (and unique). We don´t know if an asteroid affected any of its periodic movements around the earth. We don´t know if a Tsunami or an asteroid hit planet earth to move it, affecting the moon´s translation or the point where the earth spins to another place.
c) Lack of exact dates! It´s believed Jesus was born 4 years before the time it was thought ( -4 BC ) so, to our present date, we should add 4 more years to be "exact". Ha! Ha! That would give you the chance to reduce it 4 years, too. :P
Whatever thing you´ve believe, I´m happy that it is highly probable Jesus died the way the Gospels said it so.
I think it was "easy" to move the moon from that place it was orbitting to put it above Jerusalen (Lat. 31.7746 N and Long. 35.2112 E). I think God could have stopped the earth´s spinning for 3 hours and, soon after, this happened: Mat 27:51 (...) The earth shook, and the rocks were split open. (Wasn´t it what joshua asked God? Jos 10:13 The sun stood still, and the moon stopped until a nation got revenge on its enemies. Isn't this recorded in the Book of Jashar? The sun stopped in the middle of the sky, and for nearly a day the sun was in no hurry to set. )
But about the earthquake:
Was that rend and splitting of rocks solely locally?
How strong and widespread it was?
How many continental faults are there in Israel? There´s one, really big: The Dead Sea Rift... "Several earthquakes, such as the one that occurred in the Dead Sea region on 31 BC, may have even influenced the course of history of this region. The confusion and fear inflicted by the earthquake paved the way for the expansion of Herod’s kingdom. Places such as Jericho, the oldest city in the world, which are located within the valley formed by the fault, were affected immensely by seismic activity."
It is said each 80 years there´s a big earthquake over there (?).
I know nothing, but I believe it possible, except it wasn´t -exactly- in our November 29, AD 24
More information at:
http://www.eclipsewise.com/solar/SEprime/0001-0100/SE0029Nov24Tprime.html
P.S.
After 2000 years these items below may serve you to understand other factors that might have influenced the exact positioning of the Solar Eclipse´s line simulated passing far over the actual Jerusalem:
- Recession of the moon from the earth. Tidal friction causes the moon to recede from the earth at 4 cm per year. It would have been greater in the past when the moon and earth were closer together. The moon and earth would have been in catastrophic proximity (Roche limit) at less than a quarter of their supposed age.
- The moon’s former magnetic field. Rocks sampled from the moon’s crust have residual magnetism that indicates that the moon once had a magnetic field much stronger than earth’s magnetic field today. No plausible ‘dynamo’ hypothesis could account for even a weak magnetic field, let alone a strong one that could leave such residual magnetism in a billions-of-years time-frame. The evidence is much more consistent with a recent creation of the moon and its magnetic field and free decay of the magnetic field in the 6,000 years since then. Humphreys, D.R., The moon’s former magnetic field—still a huge problem for evolutionists, Journal of Creation 26(1):5–6, 2012.
- Ghost craters on the moon’s maria (singular mare: dark ‘seas’ formed from massive lava flows) are a problem for the assumed long ages. Enormous impacts evidently caused the large craters and lava flows within those craters, and this lava partly buried other, smaller impact craters within the larger craters, leaving ‘ghosts’. But this means that the smaller impacts can’t have been too long after the huge ones, otherwise the lava would have flowed into the larger craters before the smaller impacts. This suggests a very narrow time frame for all this cratering, and by implication the other cratered bodies of our solar system. They suggest that the cratering occurred quite quickly. See Fryman, H., Ghost craters in the sky, Creation Matters 4(1):6, 1999; A biblically based cratering theory (Faulkner); Lunar volcanoes rock long-age timeframe.
