Hello Serengeti, thanks for taking the time to respond.

You said:

“Scientifically speaking, even if a sediment layer does indicate an earthquake sometime in the first century AD, there is no way with today’s scientific equipment to pinpoint to within a decade let alone a specific year.”

We can identify the specific year — thanks to the unique features of the Dead Sea.

The Dead Sea is effectively a giant seismograph. Its sediment layers record everything that happened in Jerusalem, less than 20 miles away.

No water flows out of the Dead Sea. Water only flows in, then evaporates. The salt content is so high that no life exists in the Dead Sea — no fish, no algae, nothing to disturb the sediment.

As a result, it preserves remarkably detailed sediment layers going back to the time of Jesus and beyond. Each year leaves an identifiable layer about a millimeter or two thick. Over time, this mud is compressed into rock.

The Dead Sea has been receding in recent years, as less water is flowing in, but evaporation hasn’t slowed. This has exposed the layers from the time of Jesus, giving us easy access.

The Battle of Actium involved Cleopatra, Octavian, Augustus, and Mark Antony. Because of the people involved and its impact, the historians recorded the date — 2 September 31 BC/BCE. Josephus records that a massive earthquake happened near the time of the battle, killing tens of thousands in the lands of Israel.

You can see that earthquake clearly in the sediment layers in the Dead Sea. It gives us a clear starting point.

If you begin at the 31 BC/BCE layer and count up, you find another earthquake precisely in the 33 AD/CE layer, exactly when Matthew records it.

Numerous documentaries record this, if you want to dig deeper.

You said:

“That said, if there was written conformation of an earthquake, that would be important. The ONLY mention of an earthquake is in the Gospel of Matthew.nothing else, even the Romans had no record of it. Josephus mentioned the one in 32 BCE, but nothing during 30–35 AD. So, this is another example of trying to make-up facts to support the Bible, by one “scientist” on a Christian show.”

We do have historical corroboration of the earthquake, identifying the specific year.

The Greek historian Phlegon recorded the earthquake, as well as the three-hour darkness:

“In the fourth year of the 202nd Olympiad [33 AD/CE] there was ‘the greatest eclipse of the sun’ and that ‘it became night in the sixth hour of the day [noon] so that stars even appeared in the heavens. There was a great earthquake in Bithynia, and many things were overturned in Nicaea.’”

Phlegon records the earthquake reaching even to Bithynia and Nicaea — clearly no mere figment of Matthew’s imagination.