The Kennedy Assassination theories have never been so profuse and varied as they are today, with the lone gunman explanation being the weakest of all, and this being less then 30 years after the event, with record keeping technology at least 10 times better than what was available in the ancient world of Jesus.
I think a better analogy is needed with respect to the "events" in the gospels. We need to first satisfy what we hold as a record of the past, the papyri letters for instance, or some classic writer of the period. And not some passive approach either, but standing on the reasons why we accept certain claims reported by the ancient writers, and more importantly, specifically why we DON'T accept certain claims. If your reason is because you don't believe in miracles, then stand and defend that reason. Who needs to say "the claim can't stand because no eye witness was alive at the time of the writing", when the truth is that it is just too fabulous to believe someone can walk on water, still storms by their will, restore a severed limb without surgery, or any of the sensational things reported. Then you can proceed to say how you believe the tradition got started. I don't think Mark is the originator of any of the traditions given in his gospel, but that he was compiling the popularly held stories imbedded in the Jesus movement.
Ralph rmiltonc AT hotmail.com
>From: JFAlward AT aol.com
>Reply-To: "Kata Markon"
>To: "Kata Markon"
>Subject: [gmark] Re: Stilling the Storm
>Date: Thu, 7 Mar 2002 02:36:17 EST
>
>In a message dated 3/6/02 8:59:29 PM Pacific Standard Time,
>mabernat AT cub.kcnet.org writes:
>
><< Interestingly enough, it has been nearly the same amount of time since
>Kennedy died that most scholars claim between the death of Jesus and the
>writing of Mark. We have enough eye-witnesses around that if anyone made
>historical claims about him that were not true, someone could refute them. >>
>
>I often hear the claim that if the gospels stories were false, they would
>have been ridiculed as false at that time, so the apparent lack of refutation
>stands as proof that the stories are true. I reject this argument. Mark's
>gospel, the first one, wasn't written until about 70 AD, and the life span in
>those days was less than 30, so few would have been around to refute the
>stories about events alleged to have occurred about forty years earlier.
>Furthermore, even if there were persons still alive who lived in and around
>the areas where Jesus was alleged to have worked his miracles, how would they
>forty years later be able to claim that such events never happened?
>
>It is virtually impossible to prove that something did *not* happen, even if
>it was alleged to have happened recently. Suppose, for example, a person in
>your city claimed that about a year ago a miracle-worker raised someone from
>the dead, calmed the sea, and fed thousands of people with just a few loaves
>of bread. Who would ever be able to say it never happened? We certainly
>wouldn't take the lack evidence against this man's claim as an indication
>that the events this person described actually happened. Why, then, should
>we believe that the lack of protest about the stories of Jesus' alleged
>miracles, stories told forty years after the alleged events, is evidence that
>the stories must be true?
>
>Now, if the Bible stories were true, then one would expect that there would
>exist some extrabiblical contemporary evidence of these events in poetry,
>literature, or the reports of historians and journalists. However, there is
>not the slightest mention of the miraculous feeding of five thousand, then
>later the four thousand, from just a handful of bread and fish. Nine
>thousand people. Surely most of them would have told and retold their
>personal miracle story over and over again, as would have their children, and
>so on down through the generations, up to this day. But, not a single peep
>about this from contemporaries has been recorded.
>
>There is also no mention anywhere of the murder by Herod's swordsmen of all
>of the children under two years of age in Bethlehem and the surrounding
>suburbs. What a sensational story that would have been, if it had ever
>happened. The details of the slaughter of these innocents would still be
>talked about today, if the murders of all those babies had actually occurred.
> But, there is not a word of this outside the Bible. How come Matthew is the
>only one who wrote about it?
>
>How could these astonishing events not have been important enough to have
>been recorded extrabiblically, if they had actually occurred?
>
>Now, let me return to my argument that Mark's story of Jesus' calming of the
>sea (Mark 4:37-41) was copied from Jonah (Jonah 1:4-16).
>
>There are five elements in the two stories that are not to be found anywhere
>else in literature or folklore:
>
>1. A raging storm threatens a boat.
>2. The hero is asleep on the boat.
>3. The hero is awakened and criticized for his apparent lack of concern.
>4. The storm is miraculously calmed.
>5. The passengers fear the miracle-worker.
>
>These correspondences hardly seem coincidental, so the conclusion that Mark
>made up this story seems inescapable, especially in light of the fact that
>there are several other examples of Mark seemingly doing the same thing.
>
>For example, consider the miraculous feeding stories: Elisha's men complain
>that they can't feed one hundred men on with so little bread, but Elisha told
>them to feed them anyway, and it was miraculously accomplished, with food
>left over. (2 Kings 4:42-44). Thus, Mark had Jesus' men complain, too, about
>having to feed so many men with so little bread, and Jesus told them to feed
>the five thousand anyway, the feeding was miraculously accomplished, and food
>was left over (Mark 6:32-42). Evidently, Mark wanted his readers to recall
>the Elisha story and recognize that whatever power the Lord had given Elisha,
>it was given to Jesus fifty times over.
>
>In this forum we have seen how Jesus' prayer at Gethsemane and his betrayal
>by Judas was patterned after events in the life of David, so I won't repeat
>that information here. It is sufficient to say, I believe, that the evidence
>that Mark's stories about Jesus are completely fictional is much too strong
>even for the most ardent apologist to ignore.
>
>Joseph F. Alward
>"A Skeptical View of Christianity and the Bible"
>http://members.aol.com/jalw/joseph_alward.html
>
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