Post #16by MrBatman » 07.06.2003, 22:31
Actually that's not a long time at all. Jesus lived till about AD 30 or 33. Most of the eyewitnesses of his life and miracles were still alive at AD 70, when Matthew was most likely written, and at least one of the Apostles lived until AD 100. If the gospel writers got anything wrong, anyone who was there and saw the events (including most of the Apostles, who were still alive) could easily have said, "no, it didn't happen that way", and that gospel would have either been rewritten or thrown out, as many were. Paul, in about AD 58, wrote that there were quite a number of eyewitnesses, numbering in the hundreds, that could vouch for the truth of his writings, and that's only a dozen years before Matthew was written. There was certainly no time whatsoever for any "legends" or "myths" to spring up, they would immediately have been contested. (Especially among a community that valued truth above all else - witness the ten commandments "thou shalt not bear false witness", and Pliny the Younger's letter to the Emperor Trajan, where he said the early Christians met weekly and bound themselves by a solemn oath never to lie).
By contrast, I believe the earliest life story of Buddha was written something like 500 years after his death, and certainly there were no living eyewitnesses left.