Page 45 - BBC History - September 2017

The gospel truth?
An eclipse may o!er us a clue
a
3 s to the date of Jesus’s death
One of the most important events in Christian tradition
is the crucifixion of Jesus. But the New Testament is
frustratingly short on historical detail. The crucifixion
took place during the reign of the Roman emperor
Tiberius (AD 14–37). But when exactly?
The Gospel of St Luke tells us that John the Baptist
began his teaching in the 15th year of Tiberius, which
must be c29 AD. Later, Luke tells us that, at the time of
the crucifixion, “there was a darkness over all the
Earth” which lasted from the sixth to the ninth hour,
also mentioned in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark.
Luke goes on to specify that “the sun was
darkened”. That sounds like an eclipse – and there was
one. It took place on 24 November AD 29 and passed
through Syria and Iraq. It wasn’t total in Judaea, but it
would have been very nearly so.
Coincidence? Perhaps. It certainly complicates the
chronology, because if Luke was referring to the
eclipse of November AD 29 when describing the
crucifixion, he was leaving less than a year for John
to complete his teaching and Jesus to perform his
ministry. Perhaps Matthew, Mark and Luke were
using their memory of the eclipse of AD 29 to add
symbolism to their accounts.
AKG-IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES An 18th-century painting of a solar and lunar
eclipse described in the New Testament
BBC History Magazine
Halley’s Comet races
across the sky, as
depicted in the Bayeux
tapestry. Within months,
Harold II would be dead
Halley’s conquest
4
A comet in 1066 spelled doom for
the English (at least that’s what the
Normans would have us believe)
The trouble with treating a for a week, it was described by
celestial phenomenon as an some as the “long-haired star”.
omen is the question of who the According to the Bayeux
omen is meant for, and whether tapestry, this long-haired star
it is a good or bad one. The most spelled bad news for poor
reliable answers generally come Harold II. As his compatriots
afterwards. look up at the comet with
Halley’s Comet returns every wonder, the English king
75–76 years. But it wasn’t until is portrayed being warned
1705 that the English astronomer by a figure, presumably an
Edmond Halley realised that, astrologer, that the comet
since a comet had been is an omen of doom.
regularly reported at that William I, on the other hand,
interval, it must be the same regarded it as a positive portent
one. One of those occasions – though that, of course, was in
was in 1066, the Anglo-Saxon retrospect. A few scenes later,
Chronicle announcing that, the future Conqueror is shown
around Easter time, “a portent building his armada, buoyed
such as men had never seen up with celestially inspired
was seen in the heavens”. Visible confidence.
Drowning in bad luck
5
An eclipse in 1133 took the blame
for a string of calamities to strike
12th-century England
Henry I’s death on 1 December 1135 was a challenging time for
England. His son William had been drowned in the White Ship
disaster of 1120. His first wife was already dead, and his second,
Adeliza, whom he had married in 1121, had borne him no children.
Henry was left only with his daughter Matilda, the Holy Roman
Empress. Surely she could bring the royal family a little luck? Well,
no, actually. The baronry and the church were appalled by the
prospect of a woman ruling England in her own right, and their
disaffection crystallised in the figure of Henry’s nephew Stephen
of Blois who, following Henry’s death in 1135, seized the English
throne. What followed was 19 years of civil war, a period of
turbulence that’s now remembered as the Anarchy.
So what was the cause of this ill fortune? According to the Anglo-
Saxon Chronicle, you needed to look no further than the celestial
There was indeed an eclipse on 2 August, passing over northern
event that, it says, occurred four months earlier, on 2 August 1135,
when “the light of the day was eclipsed” as Henry sailed to France.
Britain and central Europe – but in 1133! Perhaps the 1133 eclipse
was just too good a story for the Chronicle to miss. Or maybe, by
the time the Chronicle was written down, the two events had been
unconsciously conflated.
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