That'll teach me to pick a random date :-p In any event, even 35-40 years is a long time to wait to write about the prophecized messiah. Not to mention the fact that historians who were alive during the reign of Tiberius said nothing of a man walking around, healing the sick and walking on water. I'm not entirely sure what the average lifespan was 2000 years ago, but it couldn't have been that high. So Mark would have been writing presumably near the end of his life, about the man who profoundly changed his life? It seems at the very least that the single most important figure in history had so few autobiographies during his life, much less mentions of him at all within the 1st and 2nd centuries, which would have been crucial to maintaining a respectful level of accuracy. If Jesus of Nazareth existed, we don't know very much about him.
"In our youth, we lacked the maturity, the decency to create gods better than ourselves so that we might have something to aspire to. Instead we are left with a host of deities who were violent, narcissistic, vengeful bullies who reflected our own values. Our gods could have been anything we could imagine, and all we were capable of manifesting were gods who shared the worst of our natures."-Me
"Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all of which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, even if religion vanished; but religious superstition dismounts all these and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men." – Francis Bacon
"Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all of which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, even if religion vanished; but religious superstition dismounts all these and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men." – Francis Bacon
