“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.
There are scholars who date the Gospels well before 70 A.D., so your assertion that the Gospels were written at 90 A.D. or after is disputable.
You have been misinformed. We have none of the original manuscripts, but we have remnants of copies of Matthew found in Egypt that date to 80 AD at the latest, and some claim that there are some that date to the 50's AD. Also, John specifically claimed he was writing as an eyewitness, John 21:24-25.
Higher Criticism was developed by liberal "scholars", many of whom deny miracles, prophecy and the resurrection from the outset, and their "scholarship" is a product of those premises.