You're the PR team
Would you make this up?
Say you're inventing a new religion and need your heroes to look good. Here are five true details from the Gospels. Keep each one in the story, or cut it?
Detail 1 of 5
Peter, the lead disciple, swears three times that he doesn't even know Jesus.
Mark 14:66–72Peter became the best-known leader of the early church. The Gospels still tell everyone he caved.
While Jesus prays in anguish the night before he dies, his closest friends keep falling asleep. (Mark 14:32–41)
Not exactly heroic. Mark kept it anyway.
Jesus's own family says, “He is out of his mind.” (Mark 3:21)
Hardly the endorsement you'd invent for the Son of God.
When soldiers arrest Jesus, his followers all run away. (Mark 14:50)
The very men who spread the story come off as cowards.
The Messiah dies on a Roman cross, the most shameful death there was. (1 Corinthians 1:23)
Paul admits it sounded like “foolishness.” A made-up Messiah would win, not get crucified.
Historians call this the criterion of embarrassment: people rarely invent details that make their own side look bad. It doesn't prove every miracle. It does show writers who told the truth when it hurt.