The crucifixion darkness is an event described in the synoptic gospels in which the sky becomes dark in daytime during the crucifixion of Jesus for roughly three hours. Most ancient and medieval Christian writers treated this as a miracle, and believed it to be one of the few episodes from the New Testament which were confirmed by non-Christian sources. Modern scholars have found references by early historians to accounts of this event outside the New Testament, although no copies of the referenced accounts survive.
In his Apologeticus, Christian apologist Tertullian in AD 197 considered this not an eclipse but an omen, which is recorded in Roman archives. In his apologetic work Contra Celsum, the third-century Christian scholar Origen offered two natural explanations for the darkness: that it might have been the eclipse described by Phlegon of Tralles in his Chronicle or that it might have been clouds. In his Chronicle of Theophanes the fifth-century chronicler George Syncellus quotes the History of the World of Sextus Julius Africanus as stating that a world eclipse and an earthquake in Judea had been reported by the Greek 1st century historian Thallus in his Histories.