Hello Graham, let me jump in here, if I may.

I've read the conversation between you and ShirleyM with interest. I was looking, in particular, for any reason- or evidence-based objections to the arguments and evidence I presented.

I didn't find any.

Shirley critiques me for supposedly not being willing to examine views outside of my beliefs, when in fact I deal with them constantly. I love debating with people who disagree with me! I great deal of my time spent on sites like Medium and Quora is interacting with beliefs other than mine.

Shirley seems to have rejected the Bible for herself, but provides no reasons to, aside from her disagreements with its morality.

Your responses to the article on Matthew's Gospel are interesting.

You seem more open to it, yet both of you suspect it may be pushing propaganda.

In the current climate, I can't blame you for assuming such a thing. It seems everyone writes today to push agendas.

Yet one of the ways you spot propganda is to compare it to other reports. If other reporting of the same events differs significantly, then it is likely that someone is distorting the events for their own reasons.

But if all the various accounts agree with each other, it's highly unlikely that anyone is pushing propaganda, as nothing has been distorted.

And indeed, this is what we find regarding the Gospels.

There are no voices that disagree with what I gave you. Not a single ancient writer ever suggests the Gospels were anonymous, or that they came as late as Shirley says.

Further, such a late date clashes with the evidence we already discussed -- namely, that Paul references Jesus' own prophecy in Matthew as Scripture in 1 Corinthians.

It is an odd situation to be in, but I've been in it many times: I keep appealing to the direct evidence -- the manuscripts, the ancient historians, the internal evidence.

Then I get blasted as though I'm arguing only because it's what I was taught, which is used as an excuse to avoid dealing with the evidence.