it's an amalgamation of so many points in Jewish Law meant to deal with how we are to treat others.
When I look at the beatitudes, I see exactly the kind of advice that one gives an exploited people to have them stand down and accept their lot rather than rise up. Be poor in spirit, be meek, be peaceful, forgive, and it's good if you are persecuted or are in mourning. Strive to meet these standards, and your reward will follow death:
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land.
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven. Thus they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
A little later, Matthew instructs us on turning the other cheek if smitten on one. Who advises people they love like this? It's not what I would tell my children. I would tell them to try to negotiate a peace, or walk away, or at a minimum, put their hands up to defend their faces if they had no better option. Turn the other cheek is what you tell somebody being hazed at a fraternity, or a slave you're punishing for being so uppity. Where are the admonitions to be courageous or a leader of men? Where is blessed are the learned, blessed are the teachers, or blessed are the industrious? This is the kind of thing you tell people that you are encouraging to just accept their lot in life without any push back.
This, I believe, is why Constantine chose this religion to be the state religion for the Roman Empire. Napoleon said, "
How can you have order in a state without religion? For, when one man is dying of hunger near another who is ill of surfeit, he cannot resign himself to this difference unless there is an authority which declares 'God wills it thus.' Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet. Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."
Fallacy. You are shooting the messenger instead of refuting the information.
When you call an argument fallacious, you are saying that its conclusion doesn't follow from the preceding argument due to some error in reasoning, that is, that the conclusionis unsound because of a fallacy in reasoning. That isn't happening here. It might be if the claim was that your source's claims are false because they come from that source, which would be an unsound conclusion meaning that there was fallacious reasoning used to arrive at it, but once again, that's not the claim. The claim is that the source is unreliable, and he told you why. They're closed-minded. They're faith-based thinkers. Opinions based in faith are of no value to the critical thinker. I can already tell you the opinions of such people on this topic, because I know what believers are taught on it, and I know that they accept such claims uncritically. So why would a critical thinker be interested in whether such people say that Matthew was a witness of not?
I already mentioned this to you when describing the anti-human evolution creation apologetics that made a dishonest argument based in chromosome counts that would be difficult for most readers to debunk. Why would somebody interested in the truth go to such people for information? It is perfectly appropriate - not a mistake in reasoning - to reject such sources out of hand before even looking at what they have to say and insist on academic sources (scholarship). Why? Because those are sources that share the critical thinker's agenda, values, and methods. If something on an apologetics site is a fact, it will be found in these other impartial sites as well. Nothing found only on these sites deserves serious consideration, and nothing true is found only on those sites, so a critical thinker has a right and duty to insist on mutually agreeable sources or don't bother linking or copying to whatever else it is you're reading, because it probably won't be looked at.
are you saying that a scholar can't also be an apologist or that somehow an apologist never learned about scholarly scrutiny and education?
Yes. They are two antithetical mindsets, two agendas at odds with one another. A scholar seeks truth using the methods of critical thinking. An apologist is promoting an ideology. This is the crux of the difference just outlined, and why many simply won't go to tendentious sources for opinion.
it seems you brushed off the culture of that time. It was customary to add to what other people said or wrote.
You've been told why that is irrelevant and a red herring. What difference does it make whether the practice was customary or not? The character of the Bible writers is not being called into question, just the reliability of their testimony.
To say a FIRST occurrence doesn't usually mean only usually. Unless it's unique. That's like saying someone had a first home and nothing surprising that it doesn't mean his one-and-only home but that others followed. Besides, the reasoning the catholic.com website uses about the dates and word usage about Quirinius makes sense to me. If I see anything else, I'll let you know. 
