Mark 4:37

And there ariseth a great storm of wind, and the waves beat into the boat, insomuch that the boat was now filling. And he himself was in the stern, asleep on the cushion: and they awake him and say unto him, Teacher, carest thou not that we perish?

The sure evidence of the eye-witness is apparent in the stark and vivid details. The waves beating into the boat, Jesus asleep in the stern on the boat cushion, the fact that the boat was taking on water at an alarming rate - all these mark the account as authentic.

"Only here in the New Testament does Jesus sleep."[44]

Carest thou not that we perish ... Turlington said that "Both Matthew and Luke soften the disciples' outcry, so that they do not appear to reproach Jesus";[45] such a comment being quite fashionable among the scholars who have decided that Mark was prior to Matthew and Luke, that Matthew and Luke did not consider Mark dependable at all and therefore felt free to "correct" him, and that, moreover, their motive in so doing was to protect the disciples' reputation as regarded their conduct toward the Master! We reject this view as demeaning to the gospels, unreasonable, speculative, imaginative, and totally unreliable. Matthew even recorded that Jesus called Peter "Satan" (Matthew 16:23); why, then, should Matthew have been embarrassed to record such an understandable remark as this? It is far more likely that the explanation lies in the fact that this is what Peter said, Mark's close connection with that apostle accounting for his record of it here.

[44] A. Elwood Sanner, op. cit., p. 306.

[45] Henry E. Turlington, op. cit., p. 306.