“Nobody knows who the four evangelists were, but they almost certainly never met Jesus personally. Much of what they wrote was in no sense an honest attempt at history.”
Dawkins is right here. The Gospels, like much of the Bible, are pseudepigraphic. The earliest writings date from at least 90 AD, making it VERY unlikely that they were eyewitnesses to any of it, and the Gospels are evangelism, not strictly history. They differ in their accounts because they’re written to spread the news of Jesus to different audiences. In some cases, the details of their accounts contradict each other.
That doesn’t make Dawkins’s larger argument correct; in fact, he’s a closed-minded, militant bigot whose argument makes absolutely no sense and is notable only for its volume.
But he is correct on this particular point.
I'm calling BS on your post. What, pray tell, are your particular qualifications to pontificate on this subject? I have a B.A. in Biblical Studies, a M.A in Theological Studies, and a Ph.D. in Theology (all earned). I have taught the historical background of the Bible on site in Israel where I lived for years, so I suppose I have a right to comment. How about you?
You are parroting old, long discredited Graf-Wellhausen theories about the origin of the New Testament that originated in the higher criticism theories of the 19th century. Yes, they are THAT dated.
Even many years ago, as I sat in graduate-level seminars (in a university that was NOT conservative), the higher-critical theories of the origin of the New Testament were recognized as specious. Do not pretend that the late-dating of the New Testament is "settled science."
Contrary to your assertions, there is every reason to believe with confidence that every book of the New Testament was written by a baptized Jew before A.D. 70. This per the eminent New Testament scholar A. T. Robinson. His findings have withstood the judgment of history.
Why do you attempt to mislead those on this forum? Your "assured conclusions" are outdated and discredited. We have in our possession actual fragments of New Testament texts dating to the end of the 1st Century (i.e. the John Rylands Fragment), which given the fact that these are copies of earlier documents, indicate that the actual authorship was much earlier.
Your discredited views assume that the early Christians were idiots who believed made-up stories with no basis in fact or history. There is no basis for this assumption, or for the wholly specious view that the religion of Christianity revolutionized the world based upon lies.