I'm wondering, is the response that the Christian Historian Sextus Julius Africanus gave to the Roman Historian Thallus about the darkness that occurred over Passover that was supposedly at the same time that Jesus was crucified on really held to any significance to historians? If you don't know what I'm talking about, Julius Africanus had this to say to Thallus:
"On the whole world there pressed a most fearful darkness. The rocks were rent by an earthquake and many places in Judea and other districts were thrown down. This darkness Thallus, in the third book of his History, calls, as appears to me without reason, an eclipse of the sun. For the Hebrews celebrate the passover on the 14th day according to the moon, and the passion of our Savior falls on the day before the passover. But an eclipse of the sun takes place only when the moon comes under the sun. And it cannot happen at any other time... Phlegon records that, in the time of Tiberius Caesar, at full moon, there was a full eclipse of the sun from the sixth hour to the ninth-manifestly that one of which we speak. Chronography XVIII, 47
Link to the passage here in this book: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf06.v.v.xviii.html
So does this prove that there was a darkness during this Passover, is this more evidence of the historicity of Jesus and how much credit do historians today give this?
We don't know when Thallus wrote or have any context for what Africanus paraphrases him as saying. We don't even really have Africanus, but only from quotations by a 9th Century historian named George Syncellus.
The passage in question also includes this claim about Phlegon:
In fact, let it be so. Let the idea that this happened seize and carry away the multitude, and let the cosmic prodigy be counted as an eclipse of the sun according to its appearance. Phlegon reports that in the time of Tiberius Caesar, during the full moon, a full eclipse of the sun happened, from the sixth hour until the ninth. Clearly this is our eclipse! What is common about an earthquake, an eclipse, rocks torn apart, a rising of the dead, and such a huge cosmic movement? At the very least, over a long period, no conjunction this great is remembered. But it was a godsent darkness, because the Lord happened to suffer, and the Bible, in Daniel, supports that seventy spans of seven years would come together up to this time.
Eusebius quotes Phlegon directly in his Chronicon and this is what Phlegon (according to Eusebius) actually said:
Phlegon, in the 13th book of his admirable account of the Olympiads, writes about this as follows: "In the fourth year of the 202nd Olympiad, there was an eclipse of the sun, greater than any which had occurred previously. At the sixth hour, the day became as dark as night, and the stars were visible in the sky. An earthquake in Bithynia destroyed many buildings in Nicaea."
So Phelgon doesn't say anything about Jesus or Jerusalem or the Passover or connect anything to the crucifixion. He says there was an eclipse (somewhere) and that there was an earthquake in Bithynia. The rest of the dots are connected by Africanus.
For Thallus we have a 9th Century writer quoting a 3rd Century writer paraphrasing a 2nd Century writer as having said there was an eclipse at an unspecified time in an unpsecified place.
We can also see from the Phlegon passage that Africanus had no problem drawing specific inferences not actually made by his sources.
So the Thallus passage is not persuasive evidence of a miraculous eclipse at the time of the crucifixion.