by The Prophet » Thu May 19, 2016 1:05 pm
> The Gospels were written within the lifetimes of many eyewitnesses to Jesus and "earwitnesses" to the things he said.
This isn't necessarily the case, considering the shorter lifespans of the time, particularly for the lower classes (where Christianity arose), particularly in times of war, and particularly in times of famine. And there's reason to believe that a lot of early Christian tradition was lost shortly after the founding of the church.
We have no credible record of what happened to the Christian movement between 64 and 95 CE, possibly as late as 110 CE. Given that Acts is not particularly trustworthy, there's doubt that we have anything prior to 64, either, and the evidence for the next several decades after 95 is not particularly robust; it's basically 1 Clement, for which 95 is just the traditional date. But even if we entirely trust Acts, and entirely accept the traditional date of 1 Clement, 64-95 is entirely silent. Any documents related to Christianity that may have been written in that time period (such as the Gospels) don't record events happening then.
The inconsistent lists of apostles that are in the Gospels tell a rather scary story, though, because it means that the names of at least some of the founding members of the church had already been forgotten. The best explanation for that is that the central leadership of the church no longer existed and had left no identifiable heirs, and nobody could remember exactly who they all were or what happened to them.
Acts, as I noted, is rather unreliable, but even if we decide to trust it, there's a lot that it leaves out; what was going on in North African Christianity, or Christianity east of the Empire, or Christianity in Italy and points west, and what about rival factions like those of Apollos? If we don't trust Acts, all we have is Paul, and all of his letters were written near the end of that period. And then we have nothing like a history of the church written for another two centuries.
The next thing we hear after the events of Acts is the Neronian persecution in 64, and we know about that through Tacitus. No Christian ever recorded that this event happened, and nobody mentioned the reference in Tacitus at all until the 4th century, which means either it didn't happen, or it was superbly effective at wiping out all Christian witnesses in Rome, which also wouldn't bode well for maintaining a hierarchy. And then the Jewish War between 66 and 70 wiped out Christianity at Jerusalem. Also, we can't forget that there was a famine in the Middle East sometime around 47, which would have cut life expectancy, especially for the elderly, which leadership tended to be. So from 60 to at least 95, all (authentic) letter writing apparently ceases, and nobody writing afterward indicates that any leaders of the church survived that period.
> The Gospels writers carefully researched and recorded the events and words of Jesus (Lk. 2.1-4).
You can't generalize from what Luke says to the authors of the other Gospels. (I presume you mean Luke 1, not Luke 2, since the prologue is what would be relevant here.) And the only method Luke says he uses is not "careful research"; he says that he is going to set down an account just as it was handed down to him. That's not a critical evaluation, that's slavish copying. And he's lying about this. We can see precisely where Luke copied from Mark and Matthew, and we can see how he changed what was written in Mark and Matthew.
> They were working off of earlier and still available sources
We do not know this. The Gospels name none of their sources, cite no sources, and do not compare one source's account to another. Arrian is our best historian of Alexander, even though he wrote five hundred years later. Why? Because unlike us, he had the stories of eyewitnesses. Three of them, in fact, two of whom were actual generals serving with Alexander. Arrian names these sources and identifies when he's using each, explains his methodology for using them in conjunction to create a more reliable account of what happened, and discusses their relative merits and flaws. The Gospels do nothing like that. We know that Matthew, Luke, and John used Mark as a source, and that Luke probably used Matthew, and that John used at least Luke, but that just means none of them are independent of Mark. And we know this not because any of them tell us, but only because we have all four.
There are hypothesized sources for the Gospels: oral tradition, a proto-Mark, Q, M, L, etc. But we don't have any of those, so we don't know that they actually existed, or what they said if they did.
> What on earth would make you think the dialogue isn't correct?
The fact that the Gospels are clearly the products of narrative construction. Also, the fact that none of the Epistles, most of which are earlier documents than the Gospels, show any sign of knowing any of the supposed traditions on which the Gospels are based. Paul's letters show a disinterest in things Jesus said and did during his Galilean ministry that scholars have struggled to explain for a very long time. You can't claim that early Christians were highly motivated to retain accurate memories of Jesus' life, and simultaneously completely uninterested in Jesus' life.