Can the Gospels stand scrutiny?

Hi, PD, one criterion that should apply to the validity of the Gospel books is provenance, or chain of posession. Just as you wouldn`t buy a valuable antique without verifying its authenticity and history, I guess we shouldn`t accept ancient text without knowing most of the details of its journey through history. And on that score, the Gospels fall down. Supposedly written by eye-witnesses or friends of eye-witnesses, they disappear into the woodwork for an extended period till the Church decides to set a canon. While the writings of Church Fathers are offered as a guarantee of purity, on consulting the writings, we find only passing reference to passages, and no confirmation that the Gospel texts were read in their entirety. Or even existed as a body. Calling on the 'providential preservation' as the defenders of the KJV do, is just mere hand-waving and no indication of provenance. If God 'inspired' the writing of His Bible, don`t you think He might have ensured its intact passage through three millenia. If the early Christian church set such high store by the Gospels, surely a plan for their preservation would include strategic copies placed for future believers. Instead, we are reduced to suchlike as the Bodmer Papyrus, the Rylands Fragment, etc. to validate a corpus, and that mainly by paleography, a dodgy science at best. Too many gaps in the provenance of the Gospels, too many alternate versions to choose from, too much evidence suppressed of other Christian groups that might have been closer to the truth. No sale, thanks.