What were Jesus and early Christians like?

[watchamadoodle]

What I want to know is who wrote the damn things. Being in the third person, it appears to be someone either making it all up, or following some dude around and writing about him. It seems very unlikely to me it would be the named guy writing it.

Or maybe just hearsay about people who may or may not have existed.

Here is the story of the gospel that early church leaders believed.
(1) Matthew (disciple Matthew for Jerusalem church)
(2) Matthew -> Luke (friend of Paul for Gentile church)
(3) Luke -> Mark (transcript of Peter's Roman testimonies based on Luke)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-gospel_hypothesis

I like that theory, and I imagine the following in addition:
(1) Mark was not a popular gospel, because it was mostly a summary of Luke, therefore it was simply filed-away and preserved in an ancient state.
(2) Matthew and Luke were actively used gospels, so they were actively modified. Independent nativity myths were added, and independent events following the empty tomb were added. This gave them the appearance of being composed after Mark, when their core was actually older than Mark.

So that's the watchamadoodle theory. (It will probably change tomorrow after I learn more. )