What were Jesus and early Christians like?

[DeistPaladin]

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.

Nobody knows for certain who wrote the Gospels. "Tradition" is what theologians have gone with to attribute authorship.

"Mark" was supposedly a companion of Paul who wrote the Gospel based on the teachings of Peter, who in turn wasn't present for all the events in the Gospel. For example, the Gospel of Mark establishes that Peter was hiding with the servants when Jesus was dragged before the priests at his trial. Peter could not have known the dialog, so Mark is hearsay on hearsay with events the double-hearsay account couldn't have witnessed.

And it goes downhill from there.

"Matthew" was supposedly an eye-witness since he was supposedly a traveling companion of Jesus and yet he seems to rely heavily on "Mark", even correcting Mark where he got elements of Jewish theology wrong. Then Matthew destroys whatever credibility he might have as an eye-witness by lying his ass off about what the OT says.

"Luke" was another traveling companion of Paul who says in his very first few verses in his Gospel that he was not reporting his own eye-witness account but compiling the accounts he'd heard elsewhere, making it a patchwork of anonymous hearsay.

And last and least, we have "John" who was supposed to be a simple fisherman and writes with the style of an educated theologian. who refers to himself as "the beloved disciple", who's theology of Jesus is considerably advanced (proto-orthodox) and who refers to "The Jews" as a separate religion, so if the disciple of Jesus wrote this Gospel as attributed, I'm the Surgeon General of the United States.