No, chakka, you haven't asked a question I can't answer, only that I can't answer it to your level of your demands. Heck, fact is you can't get any answers to those standards on even more recent history let alone ancient history. Show me the references you would use to "prove" your great-great-grandfather existed on your father's side (let alone your mother's side since the west has been a patriarichal society for centuries).
I do quite a bit of genealogical work for my own family and for others and it's always amusing to see the family "myths" that were so firmly believed before evidence was uncovered "proving" otherwise.
So, it seems to me that you give absolutely no credence to men and women that devote their entire lives to rigorous study and publishing documents to be peer reviewed of ancient history.
So be it... but you're not being truthful if you say you don't consult the studies of others... unless, as I've previously stated, you're in a position to do the original study yourself. Even then, since you probably weren't there in person, you'd have to rely on someone previous to have placed the information in your grasp.
A brief response to your second paragraph... I would answer, as would any other historian, that, based on such and such evidence here's my position... some areas more firm that others. Same applies to Gaius Julius Caesar, by the way.
Look, I've given good examples defending my position, you've given none, zip, nada, zero, so who's being disengenious here?
Finally, I don't believe for a minute that it really matters, in the final analysis, who wrote the Gospels, since they are so obviously a product of their time and relate historical events accurately and, most importantly, were accepted by the earliest witnesses available. This is on of the most primary of demands for any document, near-by or ancient... and those witnesses were willing to di