Did anyone who knew Jesus write down what He said and did?
Read Dave’s answer
Answer 1
Both Matthew and John were Apostles who were first-hand witnesses of what they wrote about. We don’t know when they wrote what they did. However, if you read the Gospel of John, the level of detail of what Jesus said and did is striking enough to lead me to believe that at least some of it was recorded contemporaneously, and that all of it was written by the Spirit and power of God. Matthew, being a Jew, wrote to persuade Jews. John the Beloved, being perhaps the best friend and closest apostle to Jesus, wrote to testify that Jesus was Love and the Son of God and the [sacrificial] Lamb of God. Their two narratives are clearly each very original.
Now, be wary of those who will tell you that neither Matthew nor John wrote the Gospels which are attributed to them, or that their Gospels were written much later than the other gospels, or that there were multiple authors, or other such nonsense.
How do they know that? Just because we can date the earliest extant manuscripts of each Gospel? Do you really think the manuscripts we have were in the handwriting of the original writers? Or that the various writers were reading each other’s manuscripts? Puh-lease. Those are ridiculous premises to adopt, and yet they are exactly the premises that lead to the conclusions drawn about the order in which the Gospels were written.
One literally has to beg the question of authorship to conclude from the content of the texts themselves anything other than what most Christians and many scholars believe, which is that the original texts of both Matthew and John were written or dictated by Matthew and John, but were transcribed and transmitted by various unknown scribes in numerous manuscripts over the subsequent decades following their original transcription, and that we don’t have the original manuscripts.
It only makes sense to anyone who has read, and accepted as true, the marvelous nature and harmony of those two Gospels, written by men who knew Jesus and were with him throughout most of the last three years of his life and ministry. Mark and Luke were written later by men who were not with Jesus, but who were literate and thus based their narratives on the recollections and/or records of others who were with Jesus. Luke, who tells the most detailed story of the birth of Jesus, probably spoke at length with Mary, the mother of Jesus, or at least someone who knew her intimately enough to know all of which Luke recorded.
Remember that in those days when literacy was more rare than it is today, there was a strong oral tradition of preserving sacred things until they could be recorded by someone literate. That is probably how we have the Gospels of Mark and Luke.
Yet let’s not neglect the forest for the trees - the fact that the different gospels are so clearly different works, emphasizing different aspects of the same man and the same life and the same teachings; and yet all tell essentially the same story, just in different ways, offers powerful evidence that the works are independent and yet rooted in truth and preserved with the aid of the divine power of inspiration by the Holy Spirit. That power shines clearly in the pages of the Gospels as they teach of an extraordinary man who not only taught things that changed the world forever, but claimed to be the Son of God AND the Son of Man, and who died and was raised from the dead and as the Son of God and Mary was able to bear and atone for the sins and sorrows and pains of all mankind.
It should be no surprise that Western Civilization was forever altered by the first-hand witness and testaments of both Matthew and John, and the later documentary evidence recorded by Mark and Luke. Their writings have the powerful ring of truth and have been accepted as “Gospel truth” by millions and even billions of those who have read them with an open heart and mind.