Was Jesus even born?

[Moonwalk]

181. I also often wonder why anyone thinks such biblical eyewitnesses could write...

...there were plenty of Hebrew scholars in the day, as well as Greek, Roman, etc. But Jesus was a man of the poor and his apostles were all fishermen and laborers. Unlike in later centuries when even the common man learned to write, in the BC and early AD it was not at all common for people to know how to read and write or to get any lessons in such. Most fishermen and carpenters and such were illiterate no matter where they were from. Often, ironically, even aristocrats were illiterate; they hired scholars to write up things for them.

Which means that all stories by any supposed eyewitnesses were most likely oral until they were written down.

This does not necessarily mean they were inaccurate. "Telephone" games aside, because most people didn't write they had phenomenal memories (they had to have such) and would tell stories in song so that they remained accurate. You learn song lyrics and you tend to remember them verbatim, unlike a message or story you might hear where you might get it wrong when you try to tell it again.

Nevertheless, it does make things a good deal more "iffy" if the story came to us verbally over many generations rather than being written down by an eyewitness at the time.