> Curious too when the various disciples lived, wrote
My understanding is that in spite of the names, the disciples didn't write them.
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Questions about authorship aside, note that only Matthew and John claim to be disciples/people who directly interacted with Jesus. Luke is purported to be a physician/associate of Paul who was paid by an unnamed benefactor to document the life of Jesus based on interviews with eyewitnesses and research from earlier sources, and Mark is purported to be writing down an account of the life Jesus based on Peter's eyewitness testimony in Rome several decades after the fact.
The benefactor is named, and his name is Theophilus, Luke actually dedicates his second book, "Acts of the Apostoles" to him.
Some would argue that because the name Theophilus means "friend of God" that it's more likely that it's a pseudonym.
We can't know that that's the case, but I can see the argument.
Yeah you're correct. I mistakenly said unnamed due to the theory some people have that Theophilus was not a real person but is some kind of metaphor/personification of the church.
Indeed, I believe most of the disciples (except Matthew, I think) were illiterate. I don't believe he's generally held to be the author of The Gospel of Matthew, though.
However, this doesn't preclude the idea of their evangelism being recorded by someone else.
Paul—while not an Apostle himself—is generally held to be the true author of at least some of his letters and is likely the closest we'll find to identifying the earliest authors of the new testament with real, historical figures.
Luke would have been literate. Paul states elsewhere that Luke is a physician, and in the book Luke states he was contracted by a third party to write the book.