The symbolical interpretation perfectly explains that account. Definition of Imagery as a literary device:
Imagery is a literary device that refers to the use of figurative language to evoke a sensory experience or create a picture with words for a reader. By utilizing effective descriptive language and figures of speech, writers appeal to a reader’s senses of sight, taste, smell, touch, and sound, as well as internal emotion and feelings. Therefore, imagery is not limited to visual representations or mental images, but also includes physical sensations and internal emotions.
The Biblical literature is full of mysticism, idioms, symbolism, figures of speech and imagery. However, when the religion was received by the pagans or nations, they had a hard time understanding the Jewish literature & theology. Something which is still unchanged to date, it seems. For instance, the Gentile "Christians", after completely breaking off from the authentic Jewish Church teachings, did not understand the concept of Sonship or begetting of the Son.
According to the Eastern Orthodox view, the Son is derived from the Father who alone is without cause or origin. In other words, the Father physically begot and caused the Son into existence from his own nature or, say his body. Similarly, the Roman Catholic Nicene creed says, "We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, one in Being with the Father." Both of these early Gentile creeds apparently proves that they believed God the father at some point physically begot the Son. One divine person reproducing two others from himself. Thereby turning the nature of God no different from the beasts. These pagans' imagination and intellect did not exceed beyond their background of mythology, that they turned the God of the Bible as an asexual beast.
Asexual reproduction is a type of reproduction that does not involve the fusion of gametes or change in the number of chromosomes. The offspring that arise by asexual reproduction from either unicellular or multicellular organisms inherit the full set of genes of their single parent.
It is a travesty that the modern mainstream Christians, even the Evangelicals who claim to be independent of any tradition and trace their doctrine upon the Bible alone, maintain the same paganized misinterpretation of the Jewish Scriptures. It is wrong to assume that such interpretation as proposed by the topic leads to reductio ad absurdum. That we fear such an approach is a slippery slope which will reduce the core historicity of the Gospel into symbolism, turning Jesus into a myth, like what some atheists like Robert M. Price argue. One must forgive the new-age atheists on their misunderstanding of the Bible, when the Christians themselves do not know much.
If we truly believe in the Bible alone, rather than basing our theology on some tradition of ignorant Gentiles, who were uneducated and unwise on every manner of the scripture. We should have no problem that the reference in Luke 23:44-46, is an imagery by the author to depict the significance of the death of the true light. This is very similar to the account of Matt 27:51-54. True exegesis is one that takes into account of the overall text and the literary genre. If the author meant the account as a dramatic imagery, he would not present it with a disclaimer or explanatory note within the text. We don't find any such disclaimer that says, "this is a figure of speech" within the text, yet we know of the figures of speech from the nature of the literature.
A modern parallel to such an imagery is the depiction of Jesus crushing a serpent in the Gethsemane, in the movie Passion of Christ, capturing the allusion to Gen 3:15. Think about various details such as the song of Mary in Luke 1:46-55; a naive man who forces the absolute documentation view upon the text would imagine that such personal thoughts and words were recorded by Luke in a revealing personal interview, perhaps, as in the Oprah Winfrey show.
People believe that divine inspiration means the God literally wrote the scripture. This ignores the true meaning of inspiration and removes the human aspect of the literature. John is not alone in using the symbolism of light of the world for Christ. The narrative of the Gospels contain many theatrical portrayals of the accounts not actually happened, but meant as an exposition of the actual events. It is for the purpose that the readers may believe. The purpose of such dramatic literary device is the forceful emphasis. It is not a modern documentary.
