In an allegorical passage, the Gospel of Matthew describes an earthquake occurring at the moment of Jesus’ death on the cross and another about 36 hours later, just before the discovery of the empty tomb at Golgotha. None of the other canonical Gospels mention these earthquakes. However, Matthew, Mark, Luke report the tearing of the curtain of the Second Temple at the moment of Jesus’ death. Neither Matthew, Mark or Luke distinguish whether the inner or outer curtain was torn.

A copy of the largely lost and apocryphal Gospel of the Hebrews — reputedly originally composed by Matthew the disciple between ~33 CE and ~40 CE — was consulted by Jerome in 398 CE. Jerome relates that this gospel states that the lintel of the Second Temple broke at the moment of Jesus’ death, implying that seismic activity caused the damage. Such a failure of the lintel could account for the tearing of the outer Temple curtain, something described in the canonical Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, although none of these accounts specify whether the inner or outer curtain was torn. Damage to a lintel is a common seismic effect, as the lintel is one of the structurally weakest points in a building.

The Jerusalem Quake, identified in Dead Sea sedimentary records and dated by Williams et al. (2012) to between 26 and 36 CE—that is, during the prefecture (governorship) of Pontius Pilate—is further constrained by modeling work presented by Williams (2004). That analysis indicates the Jerusalem Quake was capable of causing damage to the Second Temple during this interval. This opens two possibilities: either the Gospel of Matthew preserves the correct timing of a real earthquake that occurred at the moment of Jesus’ death, or an earthquake that took place within the same governorship was later chronologically aligned with the Crucifixion in order to coincide with the narrative of Jesus’ death.