Many years ago I read a short story, maybe one in a sci-fi collection,that argued that the Biblical story of the Sermon on the Mount proves that there is time travel.
The argument went something like this. Suppose time travel were possible. Where would you like to go? In this fictional story, the top choice of those who take "vacations" in times past is to see the Sermon on the Mount.
The Bible says (I think depending on which of the Gospels you read) there were 5,000 or 10,000 people there who were fed by a couple of loaves of bread and a few fishes. The clincher of the argument: This was in the year a.d. 30 or so, and there's no way you could get 5,000 to 10,000 people together in this backwater of civilization unless it was people from the future coming together to watch the spectacle.
My question: Do the numbers make sense in this argument? Were there so few people living within traveling distance that it would be implausible for that many to get together? (I have no idea how much time people would have needed to get notified of the event and then make the trip.)
