Rashomama effect of the Gospels?

Question

Why do a large number of Christians believe that the gospels were written by the disciples during Jesus's lifetime? Each of the gospels has vast differences in their accounts of events and quotes and the like. Scholars have determined that they were written several decades and later after Christ's death. If these writers were documenting eyewitness accounts, wouldn't it make sense to write them closer to the time period they occured in, and wouldn't they have 'agreed' with each other instead of having such differences?

Also, it is next to impossible for the average person to remember something that was said or done a certain length of time in the past, especially decades past. And what they are able to recall would be a wild guess, with embellishing it to some degree.

Secular historians only document a very small fraction of events during his lifetime, and none of the things that would have made headlines in that period for being out of the ordinary.

Answer 1

It a tradition and/or they claim to be written by a disciple; I consider it is possible and I believe that current text are based on the original stories told by Jesus's disciples. I can accept the possibility that the gospels as we have them are not the original "word for word" message and have been changed over the year. I just dont think the changes are significant.

People see thing from their own viewpoint. If you have ten eyewitiness to a incident, most likely you get ten different stories of what happened. So it would not surprise me that there are differences in the gospel.