“The veil of the temple was torn down the middle”
The sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was torn down the middle. Then Jesus called out in a loud voice, 'Father, into Your hands I commit My Spirit.' (Luke 23:44–46 BSB)
What it sounds like today
Dramatic special effects.
The cultural key
The likeliest referent is the veil screening the Holy of Holies, the chamber entered by one man, one day a year, with sacrificial blood (Leviticus 16). Josephus describes the temple curtains as massive, richly worked fabric. The direction is the theology: 'from top to bottom' means torn from the God-ward end, not by human hands from below. (Which of the temple's two great curtains is meant is debated; the meaning runs the same way.) Luke orders the signs differently: darkness and the torn veil come before Jesus' death, and his final cry is not the Psalm 22 opening but Psalm 31:5, 'Into your hand I commit my spirit,' the line Jewish children learned as an evening prayer. In Luke the crucifixion ends with a bedtime prayer said to his Father.
Recovered meaning
At the moment of Jesus' death, the barrier architecture of graded access (Gentile court, Israel's court, priests' court, the veil) is breached at its innermost point, from above. Read since the first century as both opened access (Hebrews 10:19–20) and a portent over the temple itself.