The gospels say that at the moment of Jesus' death, the veil (curtain) of the Temple was rent from top to bottom. Surprisingly, the Jewish historian, Josephus, in describing the veil, Makes no mention of this damage or of any repairs that should have been apparent. As a former priest at the Temple, he would have been familiar with the veil before the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. He say (Wars of the Jews, Book 5), "It was a Babylonian curtain, embroidered with blue, and fine linen, and scarlet, and purple, and of a contexture that was truly wonderful. Nor was this mixture of colors without its mystical interpretation, but was a kind of image of the universe; for by the scarlet there seemed to be enigmatically signified fire, by the fine flax the earth, by the blue the air, and by the purple the sea; two of them having their colors the foundation of this resemblance; but the fine flax and the purple have their own origin for that foundation, the earth producing the one, and the sea the other. This curtain had also embroidered upon it all that was mystical in the heavens, excepting that of the [twelve] signs, representing living creatures." The one historian who ought to have known of the damage to the veil talks as if it never happened.
