[squirt]

it's one thing to say that the gospels are rooted in direct or indirect eyewitness testimony; it's another to claim that this information was reliably preserved until it was finally written down years later, this is a major point of contention

(from Karen Armstrong's A History of God)

we know very little about Jesus, the first full length account of his life was St Mark's gospel, which was not written until about the year 70, some forty years after his death, by that time, historical facts had been overlaid with mythical elements whiche expressed the meaning Jesus had acquired for His followers, it is this meaning that St Mark primarily conveys rather than a reliable straightforward portrayal ...

some scholars say the gospels were written so far after the events that legend developed and distorted what was finally written down, turning Jesus from merely a wise teacher into the mythological Son of God, is that a reasonable hypothesis or is there good evidence that the gospels were recorded earlier than that, before legend could totally corrupt what was ultimately recorded? there are 2 separate issues here and it's important to keep them separate, the standard scholarly dating, even in very liberal circles, is Mark in the 70's, Matthew and Luke in the 80's, John in the 90's, but that's still within the lifetimes of various eyewitnesses of the life of Jesus, including hostile eyewitnesses who would have served as a corrective if false teachings about Jesus were going around, consequently, these late dates for the gospels really aren't all that late, in fact, we can make a comparison that's very instructive, the 2 earliest biographies of Alexander the Great were written by Arrian and Plutarch more than 400 years after Alexander's death in 323 BC, yet historians consider them to be generally trustworthy, yes, legendary material about Alexander did develop over time but it was only in the centuries after these 2 writers, in other words, the first 500 years kept Alexander's story pretty much intact; legendary material began to emerge over the next 500 years, so whether the gospels were written 60 years or 30 years after the life of Jesus, the amount of time is negligible by comparison, it's almost a nonissue, some believe they were written sooner than the dates mentioned and that can be supported by looking at the book of Acts, which was written by Luke, Acts ends apparently unfinished, Paul is the central figure of the book and he is under house arrest in Rome, with that, the book abruptly halts, what happens to Paul? we don't find out from Acts, probably because the book was written before Paul was put to death, that means that Acts cannot be dated any later than 62 AD, having established that, we can then move backward from there, since Acts is the second of a 2 part work, we know the first part, the gospel of Luke, must've been written earlier than that, and since Luke incorporates parts of the gospel of Mark, that means that Mark is even earlier, if you allow maybe a year for each of those, you end up with Mark written no later than about 60 AD, maybe even the late 50's, if Jesus was put to death in 30 or 33 AD, we're talking about a maximum gap of 30 years or so, historically speaking, especially compared with Alexander the Great, that's like a news flash