Why be good?

[Randy Carson]

Wait a minute, wasn't this Simon of Cyrene in Rome?
And what did he convert to? He saw a dying (or already dead) man nailed to a cross. There was no christianity, then...

Simon of Cyrene was the man forced to carry Jesus' cross because Jesus had been beaten so badly by the Roman soldiers that He did not have the strength to do so. Mark mentions it here:

Mark 15:21
A certain man from Cyrene, Simon, the father of Alexander and Rufus, was passing by on his way in from the country, and they forced him to carry the cross.

Why would Mark throw in such an insignificant detail? Because the audience for whom his gospel was written (he wrote from Rome, remember) KNEW RUFUS PERSONALLY.

So, what we can gather from Mark and Paul is that as a result of his encounter with Jesus, Simon eventually became a Christian as did his wife and son, Rufus.

And when does Paul mention Rufus? In his letter to which church? The Church in Rome where Rufus was living - a church, by the way, which Paul did not know personally at the time of his writing that epistle.

So, we see that Mark and Paul, independently of one another, mention Rufus' name in their respective writings. This is an example of the internal evidence that points to the historical reliability of the New Testament.

There are other examples, of course.