What would Christianity be like if you only followed first hand accounts?

Answer 1

Another answer from our community:

This is, just to warn you, is very difficult to answer. Since God is everything, all knowing and all powerful, he is not only a first hand account, he is the truth and THE first hand account. If you only followed first hand accounts of people,you may be missing pieces of the puzzle that you need to understand.

Answer 2

The only first-hand accounts we have anywhere in The Bible are Paul's epistles, and even these are only first-hand to the extent that they describe his beliefs and how he communicated them to his followers. Paul acknowledges that he has no earthly evidence for his beliefs.

None of the New Testament gospels is a first-hand account of the life of Jesus. True, Matthew and Johnhave been attributed to the two disciples, but this attribution only took place later in the second century. Prior to the second century, all the New Testament gospels were anonymous. As to the reliability of those attributions, modern scholars say that none of the gospels could have been written by an eyewitness to the events portrayed.

Even the non-canonical Gospels of Thomas and 'Q' were not first-hand accounts of the sayings of Jesus, being demonstrably based on an even earlier Common Sayings Tradition of uncertain origin.

If Christians only relied on first-hand accounts, Christianity would offer them little to believe in.