1. More recently, there is an increasing trend among both Christian and Jewish scholars to argue for very early dates for the gospels and for their plausible reliablity as eye-witnesses' accounts. See literature cited in n.2 below.
2. Bart Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted (New York: HarperOne, 2009), 103. Ehrman conveniently ignores—he has to—John's clear assertion in Jn 21:24 to have been a witness (marturoon). Ehrman's arguments, like most of the others, are rather facile. If the same principle were to be applied to his own writings, we would have to ditch them all; they certainly are no eye-witnesses to the events they write about. It also means that we cannot rely on official reports, even if they are based on eye-witnesses, since they are not written by eye-witnesses. For a more balanced discussion on this question, see Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimomy (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006); Allan Millard, Reading and Writing in the Time of Jesus (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001); Mark Roberts, Can We Trust the Gospels? (Wheaton, Il.: Crossway Books, 2007); Robert Hutchinson, Searching for Jesus: New Discoveries in the Quest for Jesus of Nazareth - and How The Confirm the Gospel Accounts (Nashville, Tn: Nelson Books, 2015).