Believe whatever you want. I'm not going to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to debate someone who is in denial of the historical Jesus - and someone who has been shown the early references that confirm the traditional Gospel authors, etc. And still you harp that the Gospel authors are "anonymous". That's hogwash. You're in denial and I'm not going to entertain another forty or so posts of that nonsense.
I am not in denial of a historical Jesus. People deny the holocaust or the moon landings where we have reasonable evidence for these being historical.
You are not a "Hercules denier" or a "Horus denier" and no one is a Jesus denier. 4 gospels demonstrated to be copied from the 1st means one gospel. Paul only mentions some scripture and "revelation" and that's it. The one gospel is full of OT re-writes and stolen pagan concepts of a savior god. The name of the main character in the story about a savior demi-god is "Savior"......? Are you serious?
If people want to believe that stuff, fine, but non-believers are not "deniers" any more than you are a grey aliens denier or iIluminati denier or 9/11 was an inside job denier.
To the historical Jesus (not the god version) all of the reasons scholarship believed there was a man named Jesus have more recently been shown to be faulty assumptions. Carrier puts it at 3 to 1 odds after his historicity study. Such a study has not been done since 1926. Carrier made his case and is debating scholars frequently. So far his points have held up. He does answer criticisms on his blog.
But that doesn't matter, even if Jesus was a man the field is generally unanimous that the rest is mythology.
You were nitpicking me because you thought I said Josephus was definitely wrong about seeing the city of Sodom. Obviously that cannot be known. But now you are doing the exact same thing?
The article you linked to never says it "confirms the traditional Gospel authors", not even close? It says "evidence suggests"?
I already pointed this out yet you continue to make false statements that this apologetics essay "confirms" traditional authorship? It's doesn't, it doesn't even try to. Did you even read it?
It says "evidence supports the theory" and ends with that.
But he never even mentions the Greek title which is clear evidence. So it's just suppositions based on only partial evidence which are all moot once you realize the title doesn't even claim authorship?
I'm not "harping" on anything but stating what all historicity scholarship says?
The
Gospel According to Matthew (
Greek: Εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Μαθθαῖον,
romanized:
Euangélion katà Maththaîon;
[
Authorship and sources
The gospel itself does not specify an author, but he was probably a male
Jew, standing on the margin between traditional and non-traditional Jewish values, and familiar with technical legal aspects of scripture being debated in his time.
[7] The majority of modern scholars believe that Mark was the
first gospel to be composed and that Matthew (who includes some 600 of Mark's 661 verses) and Luke both drew upon it as a major source for their works.
[17][18] The author of Matthew did not, however, simply copy Mark, but used it as a base, emphasising Jesus' place in the Jewish tradition and including other details not covered in Mark.
[
Further proof that a Q gospel is not needed from thebiblejourney.org which explains that Matthew copies 90% !!!!!! of Mark while Luke uses over 50%. So obvious?
Mark’s Gospel, the shortest of the four gospels, is widely thought to be the first one to have been written. Over a third of his account concentrates on the events surrounding Jesus’s death and resurrection. It was probably written as early as 62AD (a little over thirty years after the death and resurrection of Jesus) while Mark was staying with Paul in
Rome. It is considered to be the earliest gospel because Luke and Matthew appear to borrow a considerable amount of their information from Mark’s narrative. About ninety per cent of Mark’s narrative is repeated in Matthew’s gospel, while Luke includes over half of Mark’s content.
