Who would we expect to write the first detailed accounts of Jesus and His ministry?
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Well, there were no investigative reporters or official church historians in the first century, or newspaper archives available to some enterprising free-lance biographer. It was, rather, the twelve apostles who were apparently there from the beginning of Jesus’ ministry to His execution and then saw Him after the Resurrection.
And, among them, we’d start with Peter, would we not? He seems to have had the most face-time with Jesus; true, he might not have been much of a writer, but we would nonetheless like to have his oral history committed to writing by someone. And of course that’s just what we have, in Mark’s Gospel.
And then, after that, who else? Of the other disciples, Matthew immediately comes to mind. Most of the apostles were likely fishermen, and one might suspect that a tax collector would be more likely than they to be literate and to write a biography.
John the Apostle also had plenty of contact with Jesus, and was chosen early by Him, so a Gospel from him would be unsurprising. Nor — and here I acknowledge in particular Richard Bauckham’s important view — would it be surprising if instead that Gospel were written several decades later than the Synoptic Gospels, by a Jerusalem-based disciple also named John who had some perspectives that he thought needed to be included, too.
And how about a well-educated Gentile, who traveled with Paul, to show that this Man was not just for Jews? Perhaps Paul, Apostle to the Gentiles, himself encouraged Luke to undertake this.
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And after these were written, would we expect others? None immediately comes to mind — but is there information not included in the four Gospels and/or witnesses we feel are missing?
We’d like to hear something from James, Jesus’ brother. And we do, albeit not a full-fledged biography — but perhaps that is not surprising, since of course James was not a believer until after the Resurrection. All that is basically true for Jude, also an earthly brother of Jesus with the same mother.
Likewise, we would expect to hear from Paul about his experiences with Jesus. And we do (in Acts and in Paul’s letters) — and he, like James and Jude, was perhaps not in a position to provide a full biography, not having come to the faith until after Jesus’ ministry and crucifixion. Besides, Paul was busy with other things.
The one obvious omission here is Mary (less so Joseph, if we can assume he died sometime after Jesus the boy taught in the Temple and before His ministry began). But Mary may well not have been literate and, in all events, she was presumably interviewed formally or informally by other New Testament authors. Luke comes most prominently to mind, but consider also John (who mentions her presence when Jesus turned water into wine at Cana, and when Jesus at the Crucifixion enjoined John to take care of her).
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It is reassuring to believers and ought to be interesting to others of open mind that the Gospels were written by the people we would have hoped and expected to write them, and that through them or elsewhere in the New Testament we hear from all the other people who lived and worked most closely with Jesus.
P.S. I am aware of no contemporary counter-narratives — nothing, for example, from Pilate or the tomb guards or the Sanhedrin that says, No, that’s not the way I remember it.