Originally Posted by JamesABrown

Fair question. I suppose a better phrase would be 'records of that era.' If a legend arose centuries after the fact that she called a jackal 'momma,' then the lack of historical records contemporary to Cleo mentioning that would argue against the legend.

The Catholic doctrine of Immaculate Conception would be a real-world example of this. It wasn't formally defined by the Catholic Church until 1854, and yet the lack of any historical records contemporary to Mary mentioning this makes it suspect.

On the other hand, while St. Peter is described in the NT as having a mother-in-law, there's no mention of his mother. But I don't know anyone arguing that that must mean that St. Peter was not naturally born.

Originally Posted by Solo

It's a strong argument for grossly exaggerated rumours of death.

The interesting thing about the story of Lazarus, is that John 11 was evidenly overwriting an older script which had a completely different meaning.

It was a story of a 'Jesus' baptist ritually burying an adept, and then arriving a day late to extract him, only to discover that the man's family actually believed that the man expired in the tomb under the magic cast on him. When the baptist returns he finds a large group of mourners in the man's house and plans to extract Lazarus from the baptismal tomb without their presence. However, the plan fails as one of the sisters is followed by the family and friends to the tomb where the baptist is forced - willy, nilly - to revive the dead man in public. Some of the onlookers believed that the baptist really brought the dead man back, but others were incensed and reported witchcraft and a descecration of a burial ground to the authorities.

John simply wrote Jesus' self-revelation on top of this story, not even bothering to edit out the dissimarities.

Jiri