Hello Hunt, thanks for responding.

You said:

“Despite a slurry of academics who want to dismiss Matthew as the author, every ounce of historical evidence affirms Matthew as the author”.

The first mention of Matthew as author was by Papias in the 2nd century AD. There is not a shred of “historical evidence” for it.

I don’t know if you meant to be ironic or not, but you provide direct historical evidence for Matthew being the author, then claim such evidence doesn’t exist.

Papias wrote in the last first/early second century. He was a companion of Polycarp, one of John the Apostle’s disciples. Papias himself knew John, and is recorded by as being the scribe of John, the man who wrote the Gospel of John as John dictated.

The Anti-Marcioniate Prologue to John records this:

“The Gospel of John was revealed and given to the churches by John while still in the body, just as Papias of Hieropolis, the close disciple of John, related in the exoterics, that is, in the last five books. Indeed he wrote down the gospel, while John was dictating carefully.”

This same Papias, who knew John personally, recorded John’s own testimony that Matthew wrote the Gospel of Matthew, and that Mark wrote down the eye-witness testimony of Peter. (https://uasvbible.org/2021/11/24/papias-c-60-135-a-d-and-the-gospels-of-matthew-and-mark/)

All of this is beautiful historical evidence, my friend.

You appeal to it even as you try to dismiss it.

You said:

“The large majority of scholars accept that the gospel was written by an anonymous Jew in the last quarter of the 1st century.”

I’m sure that a large majority of the scholars you personally read do think this way.

Global scholarship is more diverse.

You said:

“The Greek gods were said to inhabit Olympus. People didn’t expect to encounter them walking down the street.”

Yes they did.

We can see examples of this polytheistic way of thinking in the New Testament itself, as soon as we step outside the world of the Jews.

Your own examples prove they didn’t.

It wasn’t a common thing. When the crowds thought Paul and Barnabas were gods, they were absolutely shocked. They didn’t say “Oh yeah, that happens every week.”

They were astounded by the healing done by these men. Their only frame of reference was the Greek pantheon, so they assumed what they knew.

But their surprise is evident. This was no normal occurrence.

You said:

To put this in a broader context, sons of god in the first century AD were as common as celebrities today. Every other hilltop had a god, a brooding presence or a hyperactive deity chucking thunderbolts or kidnapping the prettiest girls for sex.

And again, your own example disproves you.

You couldn’t go up to “every other hilltop” and see a physical god sitting there. No one encountered them. They might claim this particular hill was protected by a god, and build a shrine, but you’d only see the shrine there — not the god.

No one actually lived in fear of the gods kidnapping their daughters.

You said:

Zeus fathered hundreds of children by women, mostly virgins. His son Hercules is the best known today, thanks to Walt Disney. Alexander the Great, Plato, Augustus, were all believed to be born of virgins. In fact they’re common all over the world.

This is a great way to tell me you haven’t actually researched your claim.

You also seem to miss the overt irony of your own statements.

Zeus fathered a son… by a virgin? If Zeus fathered his son, that woman is no longer a virgin.

Take a look at my article I linked, above. I go through all the ancient claims of heroes or gods born of virgins. None of them hold up. Not a single one bears any semblance to Jesus and Mary.

You said:

Greek gods and satyrs, Arabian djinni, Celtic dusii, Hindu bhuts, Samoan hotua poro, various demons good and bad, all had human sons and daughters. The births were usually noteworthy in some way, being in difficult times, in the obscurity of a cave, in hiding from angry tyrants, with innocents being slaughtered, with miraculous signs and stars in the sky, foretold by prophets and wise men, under divine protection. This particularly applies to the more prominent sons, like Buddha, Krishna, Muhammad, Zoroaster, Jesus.

Again, when you study each case in detail, it simply falls apart.

These sorts of connections only work when you talk extremely vaguely.

When you compare the specific stories to Jesus, none of them bear any connection.

That’s what I do in the articles above. I take the actual stories and examine the claims. You can see for yourself how overblown the claims are and little resemblance they bear to Jesus.

You said:

I’m afraid your comments are embarrassing in their gullibility. Dead people walking the streets and nobody notices? Putrefaction starts immediately. In hot climates the skin goes green after a day or two.”

My friend, you haven’t researched this at all.

You’re parrotting what you’ve been told.

If you had dug into the history of Papias, you’d see his connection to John and see why his testimony matters.

If you had dug into how people understood the Greek pantheon, you’d never make the statements you made, above.

If you had compared the actual stories to the life of Jesus, you’d see how ridiculous it is to try to compare them to Jesus.