Thanks for trusting me enough to ask such an honest question, and I'll be totally honest with you. I was raised to be a Christian, but went through a terrible (I can't barely explain how deep in the hole I went) time about 12 years back of self-doubt, self-loathing, depression (one night very suicidal), and a scathing examination of everything I knew and believed. Almost threw Christianity out the window. Almost lost my marriage. Almost took my own life. It lasted about 3 years. Horrific.

During those 3 years I stripped down everything I knew and believed, about life, family, God, self, and faith. I read voraciously, screamed, prayed, screamed some more, cried, thought, talked with others—I was in a bad place but seeking so hard. I wanted to know the truth. If not, I was going to kill myself in despair. Seriously.

Today I am a Christian. I have read and studied. I have thought and conversed. I have weighed the alternatives. I've been as honest as I knew how. So, considering all the evidence I know of that supports the veracity of the Bible and its contents, and also considering how incredible and unlikely the claims made are (the existence of a God really is the biggest claim one can make), I can say with 100% confidence that Christianity is true. And I say that without blushing and with all the confidence I can muster. I've been to the bottom. It's a horrid place, but it's a place of truth. God exists, Jesus is God, the Bible is true. 100% sure. Just being honest.

It almost seems like you've thought about this stuff before...

Okay, I have to say you definitely made everything seem more plausible. I want to ask you something, and I hope you'll try to answer it as unbiased as possible: Considering all the evidence you know of that supports the veracity of the Bible and it's contents, and also considering how incredible and unlikely the claims made are (the existence of a God really is the biggest claim one can make), how convinced would you as a neutral observer be that it's all true? (maybe on a scale from 0 to 100)

> why do you think they waited 30 years before writing it down?

That's a great question, and we aren't told, but we can speculate.

* As the years wore on, some of the eyewitnesses were starting to die off or be martyred, and several people thought it might be wise to get this stuff down for posterity.
* As Christianity spread further and further throughout the Empire, writing it was beneficial for those people who were no geographically close enough to have access to the original events.

> Not only do we have way more abundant and reliable technology to preserve the past (photographs, audio and video recordings), even eye-witness accounts are more reliable

We can hardly dream of how these people's memories were trained in oral cultures. I can hardly remember what I went upstairs to get! It's a good thing I have a smart phone to ask questions of. In those cultures they were trained to remember. Especially in Jewish Palestine, they often memorized large bulks of Scripture. They had to remember business dealings and cultural events. Because there were no newspapers and video recordings, they used their brains to remember. They were far more reliable than we imagine. Socrates said, "Words put in writing are incapable of being clear and are only useful to remind someone of what they have heard." He said, "Written words cannot be defended by argument and cannot teach truth effectively." And again, "Written words are of little value unless an author is able to back them up by explanation." Rabbinic confidence in memorization was so high that some rabbis even banned the writing of oral traditions (Babylonian Talmud, Temurah 14b). What a different world than ours! We are not to think that they oral culture was unreliable.

> because people are way less superstitious

Actually the 1st century was one of very little superstition. Contrary to what you are saying, historians tell us that this era in Palestine was radically skeptical rather than gullible, closed to crazy rumors, and seeking evidence for events. The era of the first century Greco-Roman culture, including Palestine, is that it was a critical, cynical and skeptical era, not at all gullible to believing silly stories. We read the historians, philosophers, and theologians of the day to come to this conclusion.

* Andrew and Philip insisted on spending a whole day in conversation before they would buy into what John said about Jesus (Jn. 1.37-42).
* Nathanael was skeptical at first hearing (Jn. 1.46)
* The Jews demanded more than just a fit of prophetic rage (Jn. 2.18)
* The Jews questioned that he knew what he was talking about (Jn. 2.20)
* Nicodemus wouldn't just fall for his terminology but demanded explanation (Jn. 3.4)

And on and on it goes. Jesus was doubted, questioned, grilled, scorned, and ultimately rejected and killed. I wouldn't consider this to be a flighty and gullible response of the population.

> People back then were much more likely to be fooled by some trick or hallucination or just anything they don't understand (e.g. people seemingly rising from the dead, when really they were just passed out; or experiences under the influence of drugs), which they naturally interpreted as magic or something supernatural. And as stories about an unusual event were passed down they were way more likely to become more and more fantastical, because people weren't skeptical, they just believed it.

I don't think you have evidence for this but are rather just assuming it. For instance, resurrection backs to life was not part of Greek or Roman theology, nor was it part of Judaism. Virgin births were impossible. Resurrections were impossible. Instead, something was happening here that created a mass movement of sudden believers in a culture quite averse to it.

> And I don't want to sound harsh here, I just honestly care about the truth.

I don't take you as harsh. Not to worry. I, too, care honestly and deeply about the truth, and evidence, and reason.

If some of the authors may even have been eyewitnesses, why do you think they waited 30 years before writing it down? Because that's a pretty long time, and you can't really compare it to 30 years in our modern times. Not only do we have way more abundant and reliable technology to preserve the past (photographs, audio and video recordings), even eye-witness accounts are more reliable, because people are way less superstitious. People back then were much more likely to be fooled by some trick or hallucination or just anything they don't understand (e.g. people seemingly rising from the dead, when really they were just passed out; or experiences under the influence of drugs), which they naturally interpreted as magic or something supernatural. And as stories about an unusual event were passed down they were way more likely to become more and more fantastical, because people weren't skeptical, they just believed it.

I think to take supernatural stories from such a backwards era seriously we'd really need some enormously convincing evidence, not just a few stories that were written 30 years later.

And I don't want to sound harsh here, I just honestly care about the truth.

It it thought that Mark was the first Gospel written, and that Mark used a document we call "Q" as a source along with possibly the logia of Matthew (something Papias tells us in about AD 125). But no evidence of Q has ever been found. In any case, it is thought, then, that Matthew and Luke used Mark as one source among others as they wrote their Gospels. But if the logia of Matthew was one of Mark's sources, then Matthew was tapping into his own source as he cut and pasted some of Mark's stuff. Those three Gospels are called the "Synoptic Gospels" because of their direct interrelatedness. Regardless of their similarities, they are all quite different perspectives on the life of Jesus.

The Gospel of John is completely independent of the other three.

Interesting. You say Luke is based on Mark. Are the other accounts also based on it as well? Basically, was there one original account that everyone else based their account on, or were some of them created completely independent of one another?

My study has led me to the conclusion that the Gospels were written fairly early, compared to what other scholars conclude. My case is as follows:

The book of Acts doesn't mention the Fall of Jerusalem (70 AD), Nero’s persecutions (mid-60s), the martyrdoms of James (61), Paul (64), and Peter (65), the Jewish war against Rome from 66 on. All of this is very odd for a book about the early church purportedly written, according to many scholars, in the 70s. In addition, many of the expressions in Acts are very early and primitive. Acts doesn't deal with issues that were particularly important prior to Jerusalem's fall in AD 70. These facts would indicate that Acts was written in the very early 60s.

Since Acts is a two-part work, if it were written in the early 60s, that would mean Luke was probably written in the very late 50s or in 60.

Since Luke is based on Mark, that puts Mark in the 50s, where some resources from the early church put it. That most likely also puts Matthew in the very late 50s or very early 60s.

As far as eyewitnesses, there are good reasons to think that Matthew, Mark, and John were written by eyewitnesses. I have extensive lists about such things, but I don't just want to dump them on you unless you want to see them.

If the Gospels were written in the late 50s, that puts them 30 years after the life and ministry of Jesus. That's like us talking about 1988 and the presidency of Ronald Reagan. There are plenty of people around who were alive in 1988 (even Madonna and Cyndi Lauper!) who know the era and events well. Plenty of eyewitnesses for research, to confirm events, etc.

How long after the events did the gospel authors write about them? Were any of them eye witnesses?

I don't consider there to be contradictions because I would define a contradiction as: If you sat the two authors down at a table and had them discuss the event they would not come to agreement about it and would disagree with each other about it. I fully believe that if you sat the 4 Gospel authors down for a discussion, they would come to full agreement about what happened, which means that their accounts are differences in perspective and in emphasis but not contradictions.

As readers 2000 years later, we have some difficulty reconciling the disparate accounts, but these aren't true contradictions. We just don't have all the information (yet).

So there are differences but no contradictions?