Does this apply, do you think, to the gospel writers' direct reporting of the exact words spoken by various people?

I have in mind how often our gospels' writers "quote" other people. Besides Jesus' the gospels also record words of the disciples, Herod, angels, demons, Satan, tax collectors, and crowds of people all saying the same words all together. The gospels even record long speeches spoken in dreams, and verbatim accounts of inner thoughts that were never spoken, but that Jesus knew because He could read minds.

Here's our Bible reliability question : How'd they do that? How are the gospel writers able to quote the incidental ephemeral speech of all those bit players exactly ?

How did the gospel writers know exactly,
word for word what the angel said in Joseph's dream, [Mt 1, MT 2]
word for word what Herod said in his secret meeting, [Mt 2]
word for word what the centurion said [Mt 8]
word for word what the man with leprosy said [Mt 8]
word for word what the demons said [Mt 8]
word for word what the Pharisees thought in their private thoughts but never spoke? [Lk 5]
Word for word the things said by the woman at the well? [Jn 4]

What possible method could our gospel writers have used to come up with all the various verbatim quotations they claim to give?

Or did the gospel writers get all those "quotations" by just making them up? Is it more likely that "Matthew" knew the words Herod spoke in a secret meeting, or did "Matthew" probably, like everyone else back then, just make up quotes because that was the standard way to tell a story?

And if the only reasonable non-magical explanation is that the gospel writers got their "quotations" by making them up, then …. our gospel writers made stuff up. Just made it up. And it is not true the gospels are historical, not in the sense that the sayings and events we read about in them actually happened.

Bino Bolumai

/ In Bino Veritas /