************* M*W: I'll keep this one short. It has been suspected by modern biblical scholars that the Gospel of Mark uses some references from the Homeric epics, the Odyssey and the Iliad. This theory has been proposed by Professor Dennis R. MacDonald who discovered the similarities between Homer and Mark. One such comparison in Mark is Jesus calming the winds and the sea and in Odysseus, the story of Aeolus who is the king of winds. Other similarities are The Passion and Death of Jesus and the death of Hector in the Iliad. "Like Hector, Jesus dies at the end of the book, his corpse is rescued from his executioner, and he is mourned by three women." (My note: There are many other references to Homer and Mark, but for now, I'll leave it to these). F. and K. Wood, Homer's Secret Iliad, 1999, suggests an astro-theological comparison: "Equally pertinent to our contention that Mark's Gospel is structured on the zodiac, is the recently proposed theory that 'the Iliad was created to preserve ancients' knowledge of the heavens and is not only a poem about the Siege of Troy, but also a knowledge of the skies. It is a memory aid of great sophistication, using unforgettable narrative to fix astronomical data in the mind. The poet-singers or bards who learned stories by heart and passed them down through the pre-Homeric centuries were not just entertainers but the conservators of an extensive astronomical culture." References: Darlison, B: The Secret Truth About Jesus: The Gospel & The Zodiac, Duckworth Overlook, London, 2007. MacDonald, D.R.: The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark, Yale University Press, USA, 2000. Wood, F. and K.: Homer's Secret Iliad, John Murray, London, 1999.
