The Gospels are the most reliable historical documents about the historical Jesus of Nazareth

It's actually kinda funny; 64bithuman's main argument looks an awful lot like rebuttals of my argument, and he even uses some of the same sources that I used to justify the historical reliability of the gospels as evidence against the gospels' historical reliability. I'm going to be interested in seeing what his rebuttal of my main argument will be. Let's go through what he said. The reasons there are differences in the genealogies between Matthew and Luke is because Matthew's genealogy is focused on tracing the legal decent of the House of David (which is why the genealogy starts with Abraham; the patriarchs were the beginning of that line of heirs to the throne of the House of David), while Luke is focused on showing Jesus' relationship to the entire human race (which is why his genealogy goes back to Adam). They aren't complete genealogies, but considering the contents of the rest of their books, I doubt that Matthew and Luke were setting out to write a complete genealogy. Frankly, this topic isn't something that greatly interests me, and I don't know too many people in the general populous that care any more than I do. In paragraph three, 64bithuman asserts that there are two contradictions going on, and he is wrong on both of them. It is true that in Matthew 2 Joseph took Jesus and Mary, and fled to Egypt, but in Matthew 2:19-23, we learn that instead of moving back to Bethlehem, he moves his family to Nazareth. In the book of Luke, there is no mention of them moving to Egypt; instead, Luke 2:22-40 is an account that take place after they moved back from Egypt. The reason that I know this is the case is because in Luke 2:39, it says that Joseph, Mary, and Jesus went to Nazareth, not Bethlehem. So he's wrong on that supposed contradiction. 64bithuman is also wrong about the two prisoners who were crucified next to Jesus. In Luke 23:32-33, we learn that the two prisoners had actually been walking alongside Jesus before they were hung next to him. It is incredibly likely that both prisoners were taunting Jesus along with the crowd while they were walking to their execution site, and maybe they were even taunting him during the early stages of his hanging on a cross. At some point while they were hanging next to each other, one of the prisoners obviously had a change of heart as indicated by Luke 23:40-43. The main problem that I see with 64bithuman's assertions about the contradictions between Matthew and Luke is that he seems to think that the two gospels should read exactly alike in every way. However, if that was the case, he would rightly assert that the authors simply copied each other. What he doesn't seem to understand is that Matthew and Luke are two different eyewitness accounts; they tell the same basic story, but there are enough differences in the small details to indicate that they are not simply copying each other. It is true that Luke copied some parts of Matthew into his account, but he also has plenty of different eyewitness details that none of the other gospels have. At the beginning of paragraph four, 64bithuman shows his anti-supernatural bias by implying that you can't trust the gospels as historical documents because they contain miracles. Dr. Frank Turek (an apologist who I disagree with strongly about the Big Bang theory, but agree with on just about everything else) does a great job of showing the problem with such a bias in this video: The problem with saying that the gospels were written 40-100 years after the fact is that it just isn't possible. As I pointed out in my main argument, the scholarly consensus is that 1 Timothy was written between 63-65 AD, and that 1 Corinthians was written between 53-57 AD. If the scholarly consensus is correct, then you have a problem because 1 Timothy makes a reference to the gospel of John (which means that the gospel of John had to have been written before that), and 1 Corinthians makes a reference to Luke (which means that Luke had to have been written before that); since it is impossible to make references to documents that don't exist yet, this means that all four gospels were written within 30 years after the fact. If 64bithuman is going to maintain that the gospels were written 40-100 years after the fact, then he's going to have to claim that 1 Corinthians and 1 Timothy were written after 73 AD, which would mean that he would have to go against the scholarly consensus on the dating of 1 Corinthians and 1 Timothy. It's my experience that atheists tend to treat scholarly consensus as if it's gospel truth. Consequently, the early dating of the Gospels means that there is zero reason to doubt that the apostles and eyewitnesses are the authors of the Gospels (Luke is another story for another time). In terms of the manuscript evidence that 64bithuman referred to, while it might be true that the manuscripts are only 62 % variant free and that there are about 400,000 variants, the large majority of the variants are completely inconsequential, and they don't prevent us from figuring out what the original documents actually said. To see the whole case I made about it in the past, please watch this video: I found it hilarious that 64bithuman quoted the Quran's account about Jesus' death; I think he knows as well as I do that the Quran account was written about 600 years after the fact by people who weren't eyewitnesses to Jesus' life, and the account is actually ripped straight out of the gospel of Barnabas, which is a forgery that was not written anywhere near the first century. It's not a valid source of information about Jesus. I am actually glad that 64bithuman mentioned the Talmud, because that is another source of information that actually helps confirm the historicity of the Gospels. You see, the Talmud was written by the religious leaders of Jerusalem who opposed Jesus during his ministry and their descendents, and when they wrote that Jesus was guilty of practicing magic in order to lead people astray, they are referring to the fact that Jesus was performing miracles that convinced his followers that he was the Messiah, who is God in human form. This is 100 percent confirmed by the Gospels; just read Matthew 12:22-37, Mark 14:60-64, and Matthew 27:62-64. 64bithuman claims that a common thread among non-biblical accounts is that there is no reference to Jesus being a miracle-worker; he is lying through his teeth. The very quote he gave from the Talmud shows that Jesus was indeed performing supernatural miracles; Celsus said that Jesus performed miracles in support of his claim to be God, and the quote of Josephus that 64bithuman gave us says that Jesus was a "worker of amazing deeds", which is a clear reference to the fact that he was a miracle worker. You have three non-biblical sources confirming that Jesus was a miracle-worker, and all three of those sources were hostile towards Christianity! Did 64bithuman even think about what he was saying before he made this statement? Even though there are a lot of problems with what 64bithuman said in his argument, he is much better at debating than the last guy I debated against; I look forward to seeing what his rebuttal of my main argument will be.