“The veil of the temple was torn in two”
And the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. (Mark 15:38 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.) Mark welds the tearing to the next verse: the veil opens from the top, and immediately a Gentile centurion, facing the cross, says 'Truly this man was the Son of God,' the first human being in Mark's Gospel to say it.
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.