Did the New Testament authors intend to provide a reliable account about Jesus?

In Part 24 of this Introduction to Apologetics series we consider the question: Did the New Testament authors intend to provide a reliable account about Jesus? Sometimes it is claimed that the NT authors, especially the Gospel authors, never actually intended to give us a factual account of the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Instead, what we have are mostly fabricated stories full of embellishments and non-historical material. The gospels are thus said to belong to a genre that is more akin to folk lore, legend, or myth rather than to the genre of historical memoir or biography. Of course, if this is the case, then even if the NT was written at the right time and by the right people, it won’t be a historically trustworthy source of information about Jesus since it was never intended to be one in the first place. However, despite the claims of some radically skeptical scholars and internet atheists, we do in fact have very good reasons to believe that the NT writers intended to provide us with historically factual accounts of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.