When were the gospels written?

[thistle]

We know with enough certainty to say that the dating of the gospels is not a justifiable reason for rejecting Christianity.

For Jimmy Akin’s answer:

jimmyakin.com/2013/04/what-year-was-jesus-born-the-answer-may-surprise-you.html

For Taylor Marshall’s answer:

taylormarshall.com/2012/12/christ-really-was-born-exactly-2013.html

So, although these two guys disagree, they only differ by two years at most…and possibly by only one year. Not bad after 2,000 years!

I agree. I’m just a bit pedantic sometimes. I would rather say Jesus died around…

 

[spina1953]

I once read a book many years ago who the author said that he thought that John’s Gospel was written first. so the point is that many historians have different idea’s as to when the Gospels were written so one has to discern what is read before deciding if what one author sys is true or not.

 

[SonOfMan]

If you assume that the words were never written until after you discover that they were written, then you are simply setting yourself up to discover that your assumption might be wrong.

That works both ways. If you assume that there are corroborating texts written by other individuals who came in contact with Jesus the man-god, you are relying on an assumption of evidence that has not yet been discovered or may never be discovered, if they even exist at all. Which is more plausible?

You began by talking about eyewitnesses in a village. Now, what do you have in mind that eyewitnesses could personally observe and record in writing?

Other corroborating texts that support what is written in the Gospels. For example, one of the spectators who witnessed a decomposing Lazarus rise from the dead by the command of Jesus. This is an awesome sight, I would think at least one spectator would have went home with something important to say of their experience of what they observed.

Or one of the many people who was in the crowd and watched Jesus multiply fish and loaves to feed thousands. This would’ve been something worth writing a little something about, even if they had to pay someone.

There are many other examples, of course. The Bible alleges that there were many witnesses to many of these miracles, but not a single account written by one of those thousands of observes ever wrote anything of the miraculous experiences.

How would they observe all souls ever created being saved from eternal torment?

Of course Jesus came to save all souls ever created and he stated that many times, according to the Bible. The people would’ve known this and would have made sure to write anything they could of their experience in order to pass this on, and in a compelling way, so that people would believe and be saved. If no one ever wrote anything about it (aside from the Gospel writers), it must not have made any kind of significant impact in their lives or it wasn’t that important.

 

[PseuTonym]

That works both ways. If you assume that there are corroborating texts written by other individuals who came in contact with Jesus the man-god, …]

I didn’t assume that there are corroborating texts. I am willing to consider it as a possibility. However, I think that we should discuss your notion of written records by basically anonymous individuals who are important only because of what they observed. What is the process that preserves such records for generations? We aren’t talking about eyewitnesses who are testifying in court cases.

Which is more plausible?

That is a reasonable question, but I think that we should not restrict ourselves to considering only the following two possibilities:
#1 never written down,
#2 written down and preserved for two thousand years.

At least one other possibility is: written down, but not preserved for two thousand years.

I get the impression that you are thinking of documents being preserved after they are already old, and considered valuable because of their age. Or perhaps you are thinking of a record preserved by the original eyewitness while the eyewitness is still alive. It is simply not clear to me what you think is the motivation of generations between the lifetime of the original eyewitness and the generations when the documents are already quite old.

We are talking about at least one society where an Emperor becomes a man-god almost routinely, and the ancient Israelites are given a special exemption that allows them to refrain from worshipping Emperors. For others, such worship is mandatory. Does that sound like a society where people have a right to maintain their own independent records of events that had religious significance?

If no one ever wrote anything about it (aside from the Gospel writers), it must not have made any kind of significant impact in their lives or it wasn’t that important.

Are you relying upon a general principle?

Are you starting from the assumption of no written record being made about some personal experience and reaching the conclusion of no significant impact on a person’s life?

I would imagine that a cut to the face that causes no functional impairment, but merely leaves a large and permanent scar that looks bad could have a great impact on somebody’s life, regardless of whether or not the person wrote words about it. Should we focus on events that leave no visible scars?

 

[Randy_Carson]

Can you let me know where you are getting that info?
About the Hebrew/Aramaic?

Lots of places, but here’s the article by Catholic Answers:

catholic.com/quickquestions/was-matthews-gospel-first-written-in-aramaic-or-hebrew

The writer of Luke was referencing the two gospels of Mark and Matthew, which came before. He is saying there are errors in fact and description in Mark and Matthew.

The writer WAS Luke and he says that “many” had written accounts of Jesus…not just two.

Actually the storytellers at that time were taught to change the stories along the way and adapt them as they saw fit…which is probably why we so so many different facts (eg, the day and time Jesus died, what his last words were, etc, etc) in the different gospels. That was the way they told stories and enticed others in that era. It was a storytelling method of myth and wonder and supernatural events.

“Storytellers” may change a story to increase the entertainment of the audience, but the Jews were a people who had spent centuries revering the scriptures as the Word of God.

They did not embellish the sacred texts.

 

[zz912]

The Bible alleges that there were many witnesses to many of these miracles, but not a single account written by one of those thousands of observes ever wrote anything of the miraculous experiences.

Sure, if you ignore the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, John, the two letters of Peter, the 3 letters of John, the letter of James, the letter of Jude, the Book of Revelation, Didache, etc.

 

[Erich]

Can you let me know where you are getting that info?
About the Hebrew/Aramaic?.

Every early historian states that Matthew wrote the first Gospel. The Authors of the Gospels makes the following points:

• Linguists have confirmed the ancient tradition that Matthew wrote in Hebrew.
• In the early records the Gospel according to Matthew is always listed first.
• Clement of Alexandria, stated that Luke wrote before Mark, so producing the chronological sequence of Matthew-Luke-Mark-John. The Church Fathers were familiar with and used the same order.
• When Jerome made a fresh translation of the New Testament in the fourth century, he chose to adopt the Matthew-Mark-Luke-John sequence – and had to explain why he did so. This is why we find this order in our bibles today.
• A growing number of modern literary analysists recognize that Mark borrowed from Matthew and Luke alternately, so confirming the historical evidence that Mark wrote third.
• Both the historical and literary evidence shows that Matthew wrote for the Jews and that Luke wrote for the Gentiles.
• Historical evidence and modern literary evidence, both point to Peter giving a series of talks during which he alternately quoted from both Gospels while adding reminiscences of his own. In this way he was authorising the work of Luke (a non-eyewitness Apostle).
• The words of Peter, as recorded by Mark in shorthand, were distributed to those who made requests. This explains the apparent poor Greek of Mark. His Gospel was not composed in literary Greek, but was an unedited verbatim record of the spoken words of Peter, for whom Greek was not his native tongue.
• By Peter supporting distribution of Mark`s transcript, he was granting it authorisation as an official Gospel.

based on the writings of (among many others):

Papias (c. 60-139) – whose life span overlapped that of the Apostle John by 30-40 years. Papias was the bishop of Hieropolis (about one hundred and fifty kilometers from Ephesus along a good surfaced road), so contact with the Apostle John would have been easy.

Justin Martyr (c. 100-165) – whose last years were spent in Ephesus, where the elderly members of the community would certainly remember the Apostles who had lived in or visited the town, and

Irenaeus (born about 120 AD near Smyrna) – who as a young man frequented the house of bishop Polycarp in Smyrna, who was himself also a disciple of the Apostle John.

For nearly 2000 years, Christians have accepted that the four Gospels provide reliable historical facts about the life of Jesus. They also accepted that the ancient historians provided reliable accounts regarding the origins of these Gospels. Then in the mid 19th century, some folks noticed that Mark’s Greek wasn’t as good as Matthew’s and Luke’s (which is something Papias, who lived within a generation of the events, already knew about and was able to explain) and concluded from this that Mark “must have” written first – because it would have been inconceivable for Mark to have changed the well constructed Greek of Matthew and Luke into poor Greek.

These same folks noticed that there are identical verses in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, so they further concluded that both authors"must have" copied from Mark’s Gospel. They further assert that Matthew and Luke had no knowledge of each other. So where did Matthew and Luke obtain their many identical verses that were not present in Mark’s Gospel? Why, from a “lost” document, which they called ‘Q’ (from the German word ‘Quelle’). There is not the slightest historical evidence, or even a hint, that ‘Q’ or its author ever existed!

 

[Erich]

Matthew - AD 65-85
Mark - AD 60-75
Luke - AD 65-95
John - AD 95-100

New Testament scholar Carsten Peter Thiede redated the Magdalen Papyrus of Matthew to sometime before the end of the first century (and as early as 60), based on a comparison of the style of its script with papyrus scrolls from Qumran, Pompeii, and Herculaneum (which, of course, are datable before 70 or 79). Thiede actually argued that since the main comparative script (from Nahal Hever) is generally dated no later than AD 50, the possibility of a date around the middle of the first century for the Magdalen papyrus would be possible. Matthew D’Ancona even says as much in the book he co-wrote with Thiede, Eyewitness to Christ:

“…Yet Thiede…argued that they * were of astonishingly early origin, dating from the mid-first century A.D…”

A review of that book even describes how Thiede arrived at that date:

“…Thiede reexamined the fragments, using state-of-the-art electronic scanners with close analysis of the paper, ink, letter formation, line length, and other factors to redate the fragments to around A.D. 60. Thiede’s tests and skill appear to be well within responsible papyrology, although his conclusions have met with strong opposition from critics…”

• Of course** Thiede’s conclusions “have met with strong opposition from critics” – his findings are controversial precisely because of the implications for the Markan priority theory! Needless to say, this redating was (and still is) rather controversial.

 

[SonOfMan]

Sure, if you ignore the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, John, the two letters of Peter, the 3 letters of John, the letter of James, the letter of Jude, the Book of Revelation, Didache, etc.

I do ignore these Gospels as “proof” because they’re not extra-Bibilical proofs to back up what is written in them. To use the Bible as its own proof is circular reasoning. I am of the belief that the authors of the Gospels had an agenda to promote; to spread Christianity.

 

[PseuTonym]

To use the Bible as its own proof is circular reasoning.

At first glance, that makes perfect sense. However, what is the Bible? It is a compilation of different documents, written by different authors, over a long period of time. Suppose that somebody compiles information including both written words and films into one package and calls that package the “JFK Assassination Bible.” If that package includes the Zapruder film, then I imagine your present line of argument could motivate you to dismiss the Zapruder film as unreliable on the grounds that it is “merely part of the JFK Assassination Bible.”

Earlier you wrote:
***“Other corroborating texts that support what is written in the Gospels. For example, one of the spectators who witnessed a decomposing Lazarus rise from the dead by the command of Jesus. This is an awesome sight, I would think at least one spectator would have went home with something important to say of their experience of what they observed.”

“Or one of the many people who was in the crowd and watched Jesus multiply fish and loaves to feed thousands. This would’ve been something worth writing a little something about, even if they had to pay someone.”**
*
Now I see at least one problem with that train of thought. People were focusing on the miracles. How would they describe the person who was performing the miracles? Would they hire a police sketch artist, and then hire somebody else to write a description of the sketch?

There were no records of a person’s date of birth. A name consisted of a given name. If you wanted to be more specific, then you might specify where the person was born, where the person lives, or the name of the person’s father, but you cannot do that if you are a spectator in a crowd watching somebody you know nothing about. If you don’t recognize the person’s face, then you can ask somebody else and rely upon hearsay, or you can just focus attention on what you saw that was interesting.

I am of the belief that the authors of the Gospels had an agenda to promote; to spread Christianity.

I don’t see that statement as controversial enough to require your disclaimer that it is your belief.

Of course they had an agenda. Otherwise, when police stop somebody and ask questions, the correct answer would have to be: “I am an eyewitness of history unfolding. My agenda is to wait for something incredible to happen and then remember every detail, just in case I need to write it down for people in the year 2065, or 2115, or 2165, or 3015, or 3115, or 3215, etc.”

The question is: to what extent did that agenda have an impact on accuracy or reliability?

 

[SonOfMan]

Earlier you wrote:
***“Other corroborating texts that support what is written in the Gospels. For example, one of the spectators who witnessed a decomposing Lazarus rise from the dead by the command of Jesus. This is an awesome sight, I would think at least one spectator would have went home with something important to say of their experience of what they observed.”

“Or one of the many people who was in the crowd and watched Jesus multiply fish and loaves to feed thousands. This would’ve been something worth writing a little something about, even if they had to pay someone.”***

Now I see at least one problem with that train of thought. People were focusing on the miracles. How would they describe the person who was performing the miracles? Would they hire a police sketch artist, and then hire somebody else to write a description of the sketch?

I am sure people communicated by letter in those days. If it were an amazing spectacle, it would make sense for people to write to others in their family or people they’ve known from various towns, informing them of what they saw and how amazing it was. That is just human nature; we all want to be the first to share the good news. I am sure there would’ve been some journal entries on the matter. Literacy isn’t a factor, if it were that important, they’d have paid someone to write.

As to how they’d describe the mysterious miracle worker, it wouldn’t be that hard. “I witnessed an amazing thing today. A man who claimed to be the Son of God, multiplied thousands of fish and bread before my very eyes and fed us all. People say his name is Jesus.”

Imagine finding brief excerpts of letters or journal entries like this to corroborate the many stories found in the Bible? That would help with credibility and at least the conversation could move forward. Rather than giving credit to these stories, science has actually discredited many of the “historical” events that were said to have happened; Worldwide flood, mass exodus of the Jews, King Herod ordering all male infants be killed, the earth starting with just 2 humans, etc.

The question is: to what extent did that agenda have an impact on accuracy or reliability?

I don’t know. “Kinda” , “Might (not) have”, “I think”, “I don’t know”, are not strong reasons to lay my life down for or to put all my energy, time, and effort into.

 

[patrick457]

New Testament scholar Carsten Peter Thiede redated the Magdalen Papyrus of Matthew to sometime before the end of the first century (and as early as 60), based on a comparison of the style of its script with papyrus scrolls from Qumran, Pompeii, and Herculaneum (which, of course, are datable before 70 or 79). Thiede actually argued that since the main comparative script (from Nahal Hever) is generally dated no later than AD 50, the possibility of a date around the middle of the first century for the Magdalen papyrus would be possible. Matthew D’Ancona even says as much in the book he co-wrote with Thiede, Eyewitness to Christ:

“…Yet Thiede…argued that they * were of astonishingly early origin, dating from the mid-first century A.D…”

A review of that book even describes how Thiede arrived at that date:

“…Thiede reexamined the fragments, using state-of-the-art electronic scanners with close analysis of the paper, ink, letter formation, line length, and other factors to redate the fragments to around A.D. 60. Thiede’s tests and skill appear to be well within responsible papyrology, although his conclusions have met with strong opposition from critics…”

• Of course** Thiede’s conclusions “have met with strong opposition from critics” – his findings are controversial precisely because of the implications for the Markan priority theory! Needless to say, this redating was (and still is) rather controversial.

I recommend you this thread: forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=934086

Just to sum: not only do the manuscripts Thiede claimed to exhibit script similarities with the Magdalen papyri not show that much similarity with it as Thiede would have people believe, his methods which led him to arrive at his conclusion also, to put it frankly, unscholarly. He chose to focus only on a few select letters and ignored the other letters; he focused too much on supposed similarities between letter shapes and ignored their differences. (In his scholarly paper, Papyrus Magdalen Greek 17 (Gregory-Aland P64): A Reappraisal, Thiede even in a couple of places resorts to vagueness by using the word ‘etc.’ when describing letter shapes. One would have thought that he would have given more specific examples.)

More importantly, he ignored the fact that the Magdalen papyri show more similarity with 2nd-3rd century manuscripts than the 1st century ones he invokes, and, he conveniently ignored another papyrus which would throw a wrench to his theory: Papyrus 4, a manuscript of Luke’s gospel that shows a very similar handwriting style as the scribe of the Matthew fragments that many paleographers even think they were once part of the same codex. (Unlike the Magdalen papyri, we have a more concrete provenance for Papyrus 4: the fragment was used as stuffing for the binding of a late 3rd-century codex of Philo and found in a jar walled up in a house in Coptos (Qift), Egypt.)

“Thiede reexamined the fragments, using state-of-the-art electronic scanners with close analysis of the paper, ink, letter formation, line length, and other factors to redate the fragments to around A.D. 60.” He didn’t; that’s another fragment we’re talking about (7Q5, one of the Greek fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls). Popular reports confused one with the other. For the Magdalen papyri Thiede only compared the letters. He did try to have them carbon-dated, but was told that the fragments are too small and too light; were they to be carbon-dated, a substantial part would be destroyed.

“* Of course* Thiede’s conclusions “have met with strong opposition from critics” – his findings are controversial precisely because of the implications for the Markan priority theory!” Nope, doesn’t have anything to do with Markan priority, but more with manuscripts. Look at Peter M. Head’s critique of Thiede, one of the earliest critiques of Thiede that appeared (The Date of the Magdalen Papyrus of Matthew). He doesn’t mention Markan priority at all. Nor, for that matter, Roger S. Bagnall’s more recent Early Christian Books in Egypt.

P.S. Thiede isn’t even consistent on the dates he assigned to the Magdalen papyri. In his scholarly paper, he doesn’t claim the fragments were from the mid-1st century, but from “the late first century, some time after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem (AD 70).” It is in his ‘for popular audiences’ book which he co-wrote with Matthew d’Ancona, Eyewitness to Jesus / The Jesus Papyrus, that insinuates that Thiede actually dated it to the AD 60s.

 

[Randy_Carson]

I do ignore these Gospels as “proof” because they’re not extra-Bibilical proofs to back up what is written in them. To use the Bible as its own proof is circular reasoning. I am of the belief that the authors of the Gospels had an agenda to promote; to spread Christianity.

I would like to point out one fact which you may be familiar with, but I do so just in case you are not…

The Bible is not a single book but a library of books. The New Testament is not the work of a single group with an agenda but of several authors who share common beliefs.

Thus, the Bible does not form a single witness in favor of Christian doctrine but a collection of many witnesses who testify to the truth of what they had seen.

Think of many different witnesses testifying at a trial…and then all of the transcripts of their testimonies being bound together into a single record.

Lots of witnesses. All saying pretty much the same thing. That’s what wins court cases.

 

[PseuTonym]

I am sure people communicated by letter in those days. If it were an amazing spectacle, it would make sense for people to write to others in their family or people they’ve known from various towns, informing them of what they saw and how amazing it was. That is just human nature; we all want to be the first to share the good news. I am sure there would’ve been some journal entries on the matter. Literacy isn’t a factor, if it were that important, they’d have paid someone to write.

As to how they’d describe the mysterious miracle worker, it wouldn’t be that hard. “I witnessed an amazing thing today. A man who claimed to be the Son of God, multiplied thousands of fish and bread before my very eyes and fed us all. People say his name is Jesus.”

Imagine finding brief excerpts of letters or journal entries like this to corroborate the many stories found in the Bible?

How would you respond to such excerpts? Would it make you doubt that nature obeys regular laws? Would you suspect that some supernatural agent intervened? I am simply guessing here, but my first question is not rhetorical. How would you respond to such excerpts?

That would help with credibility and at least the conversation could move forward.

Maybe the conversation could move forward, and maybe there would be no change. The power of attitude is something that I have many times underestimated. I do not mean that “positive thinking” is a self-fulfilling prophecy that guarantees success. I mean that, as artists and salespeople know, we are motivated by a staggering spectrum of feelings, from profound appreciation of art to bitter personal grievance in response to the smallest detail of daily life.

For better or worse, we are moved by feelings and attitudes. The easiest thing in the world is to create a universal, sophisticated, and impersonal cover story for what is actually particular, unsophisticated, and personal. And now I see a paradox: it is so easy that it is practiced universally, giving it a universal character even when both feet are stuck in the mud of particulars.

I don’t know. “Kinda” , “Might (not) have”, “I think”, “I don’t know”, are not strong reasons to lay my life down for or to put all my energy, time, and effort into.

If you devote your life to scientific research, then the results of your research will be stated with the caution of science rather than the enthusiasm of advertising and marketing. The search for truth can be inspiring, but the results of actual, specific investigations – when stated without oversimplifying things – are often of little interest to anybody other than the people who directly conducted the investigations.

However, I agree with you that enthusiasm is important. Generating enthusiasm can be very valuable work and the specific consequences of that work can be unforeseeable. For example, science fiction writers inspired some people to make important contributions to science. Adult scientists begin as children, and science fiction captures the imagination of some children, with enduring effects.

Science gives at least a hint of some truths, but it also a tool for creating technologies, and technologies are tools that can be used for good or for evil. So the problem remains: what can be done to inspire people to seek truth and justice?

 

[spina1953]

I think one has a tendency to forget that in the 1st. century AD letter writing was not all that common as paper was very expensive number one and ink had to be made by hand and also most people did not write though nearly every male Jew could at least read. I would also like to point out that oral story telling was very actuate among the Jewish population.

 

[zz912]

I do ignore these Gospels as “proof” because they’re not extra-Bibilical proofs to back up what is written in them. To use the Bible as its own proof is circular reasoning. I am of the belief that the authors of the Gospels had an agenda to promote; to spread Christianity.

ALL of the Biblical books WERE extra-biblical for 300 years after they were written. The “bible” was not the “bible” until the Church formally declared which books could be read at Mass in the late 390’s AD.

So you have to consider each of the 27 writings of the New Testament as a separate writing, with many different authors.

So when one book references to miracles and many witnesses, you have 26 other writings that attest to much of the same thing. If more witness documents had been written, they would possibly be included in the Bible by the Church, and then you would exclude them as “proof” and the whole song-and-dance winds up again.

And about that “agenda” they promoted. To what end? Their own torture and death??!?!?! Why would they want that? For things they personally claimed to witness (and they would know definitively if they actually witnessed them). So what agenda would they possibly have? They were modest men who lived quiet lives in Israel. Why do this? They didn’t make money, gain power or woo women. They were stoned, beaten, flogged, tortured, crucified and fed to lions. What’s the agenda?

 

[SonOfMan]

Think of many different witnesses testifying at a trial…and then all of the transcripts of their testimonies being bound together into a single record.

My understanding is different. The NT was just copied many times from one source, which consequently, appears as different books or multiple testimonies. And, not all the accounts agree with each other.

Say there were true multiple testimonies though, that we know as Mark, Mathew, Luke, John, etc. They all originate from the same inner circle of early Christians, that does nothing to verify the claims in an objective manner. That is still circular reasoning.

 

[SonOfMan]

ALL of the Biblical books WERE extra-biblical for 300 years after they were written. The “bible” was not the “bible” until the Church formally declared which books could be read at Mass in the late 390’s AD.

So you have to consider each of the 27 writings of the New Testament as a separate writing, with many different authors.

So when one book references to miracles and many witnesses, you have 26 other writings that attest to much of the same thing. If more witness documents had been written, they would possibly be included in the Bible by the Church, and then you would exclude them as “proof” and the whole song-and-dance winds up again.

All of the books that make up the Bible are from the same inner circle of people: The Apostles. There are no objective writings from outsiders (such as the woman at the well, the blind man who was healed, lepers who were cured, the demoniac who was exorcised, some random person who was fed by the multiplication of fish and bread, a Roman soldier who saw water gush from Christ’s side, or any person who witnessed any of these things) who merely wrote down the amazing things they allegedly witnessed. Some of the other writings by other ancient people were excluded from the Bible purposely, I am guessing because the message contained in them didn’t jive well with the agenda of the early Church. Basically, the only books that are in the Bible are the ones what are not objective or from other sources, so it wouldn’t exactly be the same song-and-dance all over again, we’d just be having another discussion.

 

[Randy_Carson]

My understanding is different. The NT was just copied many times from one source, which consequently, appears as different books or multiple testimonies. And, not all the accounts agree with each other.

If they were all copied from one source, then why DON’T they agree with one another?

I appreciate that 2,000 years after the fact, people who wish to deny the truth of the gospels will come up with crazy ideas, but if you read the writings of the earliest Christians, known as the Early Church Fathers, they unanimously ascribe the four gospels to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Additional authors include, Paul, James, Peter, etc.

Say there were true multiple testimonies though, that we know as Mark, Mathew, Luke, John, etc. They all originate from the same inner circle of early Christians, that does nothing to verify the claims in an objective manner. That is still circular reasoning.

That is not the definition of circular reasoning.

However, some basic facts emerge from the histories recorded by non-Christians, also. Therefore, the reliability of the New Testament can be verified to a certain extent by more reluctant witnesses.

 

[SonOfMan]

And about that “agenda” they promoted. To what end? Their own torture and death??!?!?! Why would they want that?

There are allegations out there that these tortures and deaths never actually took place and the story of martys has been mythicized. I should look into them more to see the specifics of that disagreement.

For the sake of discussion, let’s assume the believers were killed. Were they true martyrs, dying willingly for their claims or were they simply assasinated/executed for trespassing on foreign soil, without being given the choice to either recant their views and save themselves, or persist in their message and be put to death?

For things they personally claimed to witness (and they would know definitively if they actually witnessed them). So what agenda would they possibly have?

Overthrowing the Roman government, overthrowing various other worldly governments and conquering those who were seen as a threat to the people of Israel? The Jews were awaiting a Messiah who would liberate their people. A story about a mighty Messiah who cannot be killed and could reign fire down from Heaven if he so wanted, makes for good motivation to gather the troops and encourage them. According to many allegations, Christianity was an effective tool at assimilating many cultures/other religions, giving Christians all the power.