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I don't think it is that relevant if John wrote his Gospel down in A.D. 100 or A.D. 40, in terms of his OWN memory. One person here has already mentioned New Testament historian Richard Bauckman's book "Jesus and the Eyewitnesses" which is a good scholarly book on this subject, since it pertains to oral traditions and memories of eyewitnesses.
I think you need to remember the apostles began preaching the Gospel of who Jesus is immediately after his resurrection and they kept it up throughout their whole life as their mission and purpose until they died. Obviously when you keep repeating the same story over and over again and make your living practically, the odds of you forgetting it after a while are very improbable. That is why New Testament scholars regularly trust sources of Jesus they believe to be based on eyewitness testimony albeit decades later, and that includes the skeptical scholars. Eyewitnesses testimony faithfully recording something that should be deemed as accurate as a contemporary report regardless if is not contemporary is not really in dispute among scholars today. Even Bart Ehrman, an agnostic atheist NT historian, stated he believed the Gospels to have eventually been based on eyewitness testimony and regularly used it as very reliable when he though this or that in the Gospels likely reached back to the original witnesses. The dispute is whether the early church was good at keeping their own traditions from the apostles reliable. Obviously, this does not matter if you already accept the Gospels were based on apostolic testimony anyway, not using and strand of traditions eventually reaching back to them but using the so called "living voices" themselves.
Furthermore, dating the Gospel accounts is a very subjective business and really no critical scholar has researched severly into it to come with a book on it. Honestly, the earliest one stating the late 1st century dates of the Gospels widely known is from Harnack literally a CENTURY ago. I would advise looking into John Wenheim's "Redating Matthew, Mark, and Luke" and John Robinson's "Redating the New Testament." Robinson was actually a liberal and skeptical scholar, which makes the book all the more interesting, as he dates the final Gospels to the A.D. 50s and early 60s, including John, but also dates what he deems former drafts of them as early as the A.D. 40s.
I think you need to remember the apostles began preaching the Gospel of who Jesus is immediately after his resurrection and they kept it up throughout their whole life as their mission and purpose until they died. Obviously when you keep repeating the same story over and over again and make your living practically, the odds of you forgetting it after a while are very improbable. That is why New Testament scholars regularly trust sources of Jesus they believe to be based on eyewitness testimony albeit decades later, and that includes the skeptical scholars. Eyewitnesses testimony faithfully recording something that should be deemed as accurate as a contemporary report regardless if is not contemporary is not really in dispute among scholars today. Even Bart Ehrman, an agnostic atheist NT historian, stated he believed the Gospels to have eventually been based on eyewitness testimony and regularly used it as very reliable when he though this or that in the Gospels likely reached back to the original witnesses. The dispute is whether the early church was good at keeping their own traditions from the apostles reliable. Obviously, this does not matter if you already accept the Gospels were based on apostolic testimony anyway, not using and strand of traditions eventually reaching back to them but using the so called "living voices" themselves.
Furthermore, dating the Gospel accounts is a very subjective business and really no critical scholar has researched severly into it to come with a book on it. Honestly, the earliest one stating the late 1st century dates of the Gospels widely known is from Harnack literally a CENTURY ago. I would advise looking into John Wenheim's "Redating Matthew, Mark, and Luke" and John Robinson's "Redating the New Testament." Robinson was actually a liberal and skeptical scholar, which makes the book all the more interesting, as he dates the final Gospels to the A.D. 50s and early 60s, including John, but also dates what he deems former drafts of them as early as the A.D. 40s.
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