One of the best internal arguments for the authenticity of the Gospels as historical accounts is their utter freedom to include details that any good public relations professional would avoid. If they were cooked up to sell a tale in which they did not believe, they would never have been written the way they are written.
Take Jesus’ closest followers, the disciples, or the twelve. These men, whom the first hearers or readers would know, were the shepherds of this upstart branch of Judaism. They are not depicted as heroic, particularly wise, or even necessarily virtuous characters. Many of the stories involve them failing to believe in the man they were following around, failing to understand what He was driving at, and failing to pursue the course he followed. Jesus calls the twelve as a group “men of little faith” multiple times, refers to the leader as “Satan,” and has to rebuke the next two closest disciples for fixating on their own place in the cosmic hierarchy. Oh, yeah—one of them betrayed Him for thirty pieces of silver.
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