The Jesus Freaks Will Hate This

[Mr Greene]

You guys are making me work, and that's good. I pretty much stayed on the internet, but I consulted secular and christian sources. Anyway, it does appear that you are right in that none of the gospels were likely penned by the individuals they were named after. I'm not even sure that the church fathers believed they were, but rather that they believed they were written based on traditions that came down from these men. I had already known that the synoptic gospels all drew from a common source or sources. The gospel of John, of course, is attributed to a tradition that was likely passed on through a community associated directly with the apostle John.

OK that seems a reasonably objective assessment.

Having said this, I don't believe that the accounts in the gospels were not from eyewitnesses. Saying that eyewitnesses didn't write the gospels doesn't mean that the accounts were not from people who viewed the events. We don't know who wrote the sources, such as Q, that the synoptic writers relied on, but they were very likely eyewitnesses. If the apostle John was the source for the gospel of John, then the source was obviously an eyewitness to Jesus.

Then you add this which utterly undermines your own position...

If it was proven that the authors of the gospels were Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, would you then believe the christian message?

For myself that would require corroborating physical evidence regarding large sections of the OT where the text and archaeology directly contradict each other.