◉ The Documentation-Expectation Test Matthew's Earthquake, Raised Saints, and the Evidential Weight of Public Silence

Matthew 27:51–53 reports an earthquake, opened tombs, the raising of many saints, and their appearance to many in Jerusalem. If the last of these is literal public history, it is not a private miracle claim but a socially visible event involving recognizable dead persons. This paper asks whether the event's documentary isolation should reduce confidence in that reading. Its answer is yes, but only through a channel-sensitive comparison: an absence matters when the missing trace would be more probable if the event occurred than under a relevant rival. The inquiry separates the earthquake from the raised saints, discounts dependent sources, and evaluates the other Gospels, Paul, Acts, Josephus, later Christian reception, and geological evidence according to access, salience, incentive, survival, and independence. No single silence is decisive. Together, however, Matthew's unique report, the lack of early downstream use of an obvious resurrection argument, and the passage's dense scriptural-apocalyptic grammar are more expected if the scene functions primarily as literary-apocalyptic signification than if many formerly dead persons appeared publicly in Jerusalem. A broadly dated early-first-century seismic disturbance, even if accepted, does not corroborate tomb openings or postmortem appearances. The conclusion is comparative and defeasible. It does not assign a zero prior to miracles, prove the event impossible, settle Matthew's complete authorial intention, or discredit the wider resurrection claim. It does place a burden on the literal-public reading: specify which trace channels should have existed, why their combined silence remains unsurprising, and why a scene preserved by Matthew alone may nevertheless be used as public historical evidence.