How Could Anyone Believe the Gospels Are Eywitness Accounts?

[abaris]

....

Ashes were already falling, not as yet very thickly. I looked round: a dense black cloud was coming up behind us, spreading over the earth like a flood.'Let us leave the road while we can still see,'I said,'or we shall be knocked down and trampled underfoot in the dark by the crowd behind.'We had scarcely sat down to rest when darkness fell, not the dark of a moonless or cloudy night, but as if the lamp had been put out in a closed room.

And that's considered the first accurate description of a pyroclastic wave. That's why his account is to be considered accurate, since noone at that time had any knowledge of this phenomenon. Which is hardly surprising, given that there hadn't been major eruptions in the Roman empire until the year 79. Today we know that a series of pyroclastic waves was responsible for most of the destructions in Pompei and Herculaneum.