No... they would be the four written accounts. And what would bring you to the conclusion that they are different versions of the same source?
I said that
three of them were: it looks like the general scholarly consensus is that Matthew, Mark and Luke all came from the original source material.
And academic opinions aside, the fact that they're word-for-word the same in many locations is a bit of a dead giveaway, isn't it?
Josephus is one of the five that I've seen quoted. Josephus is the only one that didn't refer to Jesus as Christ, I think.
There's that one mention in Josephus'
Antiquities of the Jews of "brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James". From what I can gather, the passage is considered generally authentic, though "who was called Christ" might be a later addition.
I'm not sure how conclusively this points to the truth of the Jesus who features in the Gospels, though. Later in the very same paragraph, Josephus refers to Jesus as "the son of Damneus, high priest." The same book also mentions the following other Jesuses (Jesi?):
- Jesus, the High Priest
- Jesus, the son of Gamaliel and the successor of Jesus
- Jesus, son of Josadek
Now... I note a few things:
- it seems that Jesus was a common name in ancient Judea.
- this event that Josephus describes apparently happened in AD 62 (since they're placed after the death of Festus, just as Albinus takes his place as Procurator of Judea. It seems like the consensus is that Josephus wrote Antiquities of the Jews around AD 93-94. When was the crucifixion supposed to have occured? ~ AD 30-32? Assuming the passage, including the reference to Jesus as Christ, is authentic, at best, Josephus is relying on oral transmission of key details over at least one generation; at worst, Josephus is relying on decades of rumour.
I don't think that the possibility that the "Jesus" in question only refers to "a" Jesus and not "the" Jesus should be dismissed out-of-hand.
We are talking about the historical Jesus, not his deity.
The Bible is a historically reliable document and there is no reason to think that the centerpiece of the NT was a fabrication that no one at the time seemed to pick up on.
I don't think that anyone's suggesting that great care wasn't taken with the Bible, but I do think it's worth acknowledging that virtually every person who played a part in its creation and early distribution had an agenda.
I would think it naive to think that Gentiles did not know what the Jews thought out Jesus' subject matter. The Gentiles that were preached to were usually side by side with Jews or at least in the same area living with them. It's not like they were some religious sect on the other side of the world.
I guess "belief" probably would have been a better term than "knowledge". I suppose it's possible that Greek Gentiles might have known a bit of the Jewish religion (though I wonder how much they actually would know), but I think they'd be much less likely to care that this person being proclaimed as the Christ, i.e. as the Messiah, didn't actually match the Jewish messianic prophecies, and would be less likely to care about other aspects of Christianity that still are differences between the two religions.
Besides all of that, I don't know what source you are judging by when you say that more Gentiles accepted Jesus' message than Jews. I can't think of any evidence offhand for that.
Well, the Epistles paint a fairly clear picture, I think. Look at where Paul's churches were established: mainly in the Greek islands, with Pagan converts. In Acts, most of Paul's encounters with Jews on his missionary journeys are described as confrontational.
As far as I can tell from the Bible, Paul's minstry, which was directed at the Gentiles, flourished and grew. The ministry of the other Apostles directed at the Jews stumbled and met with fierce resistance. Do you get a different impression?