Anyway:
The question posed is whether the writing styles of the Gospels are consistent with that of an eyewitness account. To illustrate what I am getting at, let me show a few (fictional, but plausible) eyewitness accounts on another topic.
Eyewitness Account 1:
In the above example, the account was written in the first person as indicated by what I would term the "eyewitness I", which is an "I" that unambiguously refers to the narrarator or the eyewitness. To my knowledge, the only Gospel in which the "eyewitness I" is used is in Luke, and even then it is used to indicate that Luke is not himself an eyewitness but is supposedly compiling testimony from those who are. Is there any other use of the "eyewitness I"?I was walking back to my dorm at around 8 at night when I saw a white van crash into a parked red car at the corner of North Avenue and Techwood. The van was going at least 30 miles per hour when it crashed into the car, hitting the red car side on, severely damaging the left side of the red car and moving in onto the sidewalk. After the collision, the white van, which had suffered some damage to its front bumper, backed up and zoomed off. I couldn't catch the license plate.
Of course, one can have an eyewitness account without the "eyewitness I".
Eyewitness Account 2:
This is written in the third-person limited form, which is where events are expressed without the use of an "eyewitness I", but is written from one and only one point of view. In other words, the text takes no dramatic jumps in perspective beyond that which a single eyewitness could plausibly take. A counter example:A white van crashed into a parked red car at the corner of North Avenue and Techwood. The van was going at least 30 miles per hour when it crashed into the car, hitting the red car side on, severely damaging the left side of the red car and moving in onto the sidewalk. After the collision, the white van, which had suffered some damage to its front bumper, backed up and zoomed off. The license plate number was not readily visible.
Not an Eyewitness Account:
The above obviously isn't an eyewitness account. It may be a narrative of events based on multiple eyewitness accounts (possibly a combination of Phil and Mary, or Matt and Mary, or some other unspecified combination), but it cannot be an eyewitness account because no single eyewitness could have plausibly seen all of the above events.While he was driving a couple buddies home in his white van, Bob was talking on his cell phone to his wife, Mary. "Look, I'm sorry, but the client meeting ran late and...", Bob said.
Mary sighed and replied, "Fine, I'll get something around for you to eat when you get here.".
Bob said "Thanks, I'll be home soo..." but was interrupted when he crashed his white van into a red car he had overlooked in his conversation.
"Bob? Bob?", said Mary, with no response. "Guess the signal got lost somewhere".
"Darn cell phone's smashed... Are y'all all right back there?", asked Bob.
"I'm fine but Matt doesn't look too good.", said Phil.
"Crap, there's a hospital around here, we'd better get him there quick!", said Bob, rushing away from the wreckage of the red car toward the hospital.
So, overall the main questions of contention for the thread are:
1) Are there any other uses of the "eyewitness I" in the Gospels? If so, what are they and what do they indicate about the eyewitness/narrator?
2) Where there isn't an "eyewitness I", can the events in any given individual book of the Gospels be plausibly observed by a single eyewitness (making it a possible eyewitness account) or not (making it, at best, a narrative based on several unspecified eyewitness accounts)?
