[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

"Do you have a source for the four Gosples being eyewitness accounts?"

Statements of the writers, or the apostles is a start. See Luke 1:1-3, 1 John 1:1-3, Acts 1:1-3. II Peter 1:16. The New Testament claims to be either be eyewitness, or compilations of eyewitness accounts. Eusibius' "Ecclesiastical history" contains information on their writing but I do not recall the specifics.

It is hard to do justice to this subject and condense it to a few comments on a thread. F.F. Bruce was the Rylands professor of biblical criticism at the University of Manchester in England. He wrote 2 very good books on the subject which would be much better to refer to than this thread. The first is:

"The New Testament Documents, Are They Reliable?"

It has a good discussion on the date of the writings, eyewitness source of the documents, comparison of content to history of the time and to the known archeology. There is a chapter on early references to Christ in the Mishna, or Jewish law code. The second book is:

"Jesus & Christian Origins outside the New Testament"

which includes early evidence from pagan and Jewish writers as well as from Christian apocrypha. The copies that I have were published by Wm B Eerdmans Publishing.

[bigsigh]

Thanx, it's a subject I get interested in now and then. Most of my readings were saying that they were the stories passed on by the actual apostle, but written by a follower of that apostle or some acquaintence.

[bigsigh]

BTW I think it was historian Michael Grant who made a case for the existence of Jesus by citing the Gospels including the agnostics. Something along the line that how did so many stories get written about one person by such a diverse group of people. He said from a historian's viewpoint it was expected and not unusual that the various accounts would not be exactly alike.