The Gospel Accounts Are Anonymous

It seems incredibly clear that my opponent makes countless errors and utterly spurious connections. Allow me to demonstrate. First, he claims that the Gospels were written too lately to have been written by the Apostles. Now, this dating is completely rejected by virtually all Scholars and Historians [1]. First, I will refute the arguments he tries to give to show these have a late dating, then I will show they are very early documents. He first appeals to the Abomination of Desolation (desolating sacrilege) annotated in the Gospel of Mark and Matthew, from Daniel 12, which was written around 530 BC. So, how does Con somehow issue that this shows these Gospels are written sometime around 130 BC? He says this "best fits" with the Bar Kochba Revolt in 130 AD, when in fact I can see no connection between these at all. Indeed, he merely asserted the connection. He then says Bar Kochba was attributed with doing miracles. Again, we see no sources, and what's worse is that the Antichrist is supposed to literally claim to be God [2]and sit in the Holy Temple [2], create a one world government [3], etc, etc, etc. Bar Kochba utterly fails qualification for the Antichrist. My opponent claims that the Gospel of Matthew says the Antichrist will do deceitful wonders, but the only thing deceitful is this very claim, as the Gospel of Matthew does not say this, it is said in 2 Thessalonians 2:9 [4], which was written by Paul. My opponent goes on to reference Robert Price -- one of the least respected academics in the historicity of early Christianity, and has no peer-review at all for these claims, however, I will ignore this for the sake of argument. According to my opponent, the Transfiguration only makes sense if the Apostles died. Now, what's the problem with this? He completely fabricated it, such a thing has no implication whatsoever. Let me explain. Biblically, the Transfiguration occurs after the Second Coming of Jesus, which occurs after the end of the world, in which the faithful in Christ will have their bodies transformed into eternal bodies. To say this only makes sense if the Apostles died is simply a Non-Sequitur Fallacy, especially considering the four Gospels don't even mention the Transfiguration. Then, my opponent says this; "Matthew also presupposes a competing form of Judaism in which the titles Abba and Rabbi are common and where scribes sit on the Seat of Moses in synagogues. There is no evidence of any sect like this existing before 100CE it seems to have been something from the mid-second century." He gives us no reference to where Matthew makes it seem as if these titles are common, he gives us no evidence that it actually became common in the second century, and the idea that it can't be first century because we don't have surviving records on it is an Argument from Silence. He then accuses Mark and Matthew of using material from Josephus, again, without any evidence. He simply asserts it, we have no reason whatsoever to believe this erroneous nonsense. There is not a single respected Historian in the world who believes this is true, so why should we just become someone tells us it without evidence? The next ridiculous thing my opponent says is that John references the Samaritan Temple (again, he gives us no reference to the Gospel of John to prove this), and concludes John was written in the second century. Now, let's pretend for a second John references this. It is still irrelevant, as we know the Samaritan Temple existed since at least 500 BC [5], and thus anyone from the 1st century AD could easily reference it as it would have existed for many centuries. Next, he points out that the Gospels are internally anonymous -- if the Apostles wrote them actually wrote them, this would be expected, as the Apostles wanted to focus on showing the message is of Jesus [6] rather than invoking themselves as the authors and thus drawing attention away from the message [7], as even Bart Ehrman acknowledges. Furthermore, the Gospels were of the genre of an Ancient Biography, and thus could not name themselves. "the claim of an anonymous history was higher than that of a named work. In the ancient world an anonymous book, rather like an encylopedia article today, implicitly claimed complete knowledge and reliability. It would have reduced the impact of the Gospel of Matthew had the author written 'this is my version' instead of 'this is what Jesus said and did'" -E.P. Sanders [8], world class Historian My opponent then appeals to illiteracy to repudiate that the Apostles could have written these, however all Apostles but John could write. Matthew was said to be a tax collector [9], Mark an interpreter and translator for Peter [10], and Luke a physician [11], and thus all were educated and likely able to write, even if the majority couldn't. John, the only one who could not write, would have probably gotten a scribe to write for him, which is how most of the ancient world wrote back then anyways. Now, in response to the massive documentation I gave for the authorship of the Gospels, my opponent says; "We are given no reasons to trust that they actually knew this information. " Obviously, this is ridiculous as a counter-argument. How do we know Josephus knew about Vespasian coming to subdue the Jews? We don't, no Historian uses such ridiculous methodology. To come to a historical conclusion, we must look at multiple attestation and early attestation, and as I have shown, there is tons of this for the Gospels, countless early Church writers record them, including Terullian, Iraenius, Papias, Origen, Clement of Alexandria, and the Muratorian Fragment, and in my first post I gave reference to all of these excluding Origen. He says Papias cannot be used as evidence, as he references Matthew wrote his Gospel in the original Hebrew, however internal evidence shows Matthew wrote in the original Greek. This is false, no such internal evidence exists, both Papias and Iraenius tell us Matthew wrote in Hebrew [12], and so his objection is refuted. Thus, as we have seen, the claim of later imposters writing in the name of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John is unwarranted and without evidence, and contradicts all our early historical attestation. Anyways, the evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of early dating for the Gospels. For example, the Gospel of Matthew is directed to a Jewish audience , but after the Roman Jewish War of 70 AD, the Jews were completely removed and scattered. Thus, Matthew could only have written it to his audience if he was writing before 70 AD. Secondly, Clement of Rome, around 95 AD, tells us Paul was martyred for his faith. However, the Book of Acts documents through Paul's life, and it ends with him living in Rome for 2 years, proclaiming Christ [15]. This means that Acts must be before 95 AD. Also, we also know Paul died 67 AD [16], and thus that would put Acts before 67 AD. Matthew, Mark, and Luke were all written before Acts, meaning all the Gospels are extremely early. 1. http://www.bc.edu... 2.http://biblehub.com... 3. http://www.gotquestions.org... 4. http://biblehub.com... 5. https://en.wikipedia.org... 6. https://www.biblegateway.com... 7. http://ehrmanblog.org... 8. The Historical Figure of Jesus pg. 66 9. https://www.biblegateway.com... 10. http://coldcasechristianity.com... 11. https://www.biblegateway.com... 12. http://www.answering-islam.org... 13. Redating Mark, Matthew, Luke, pg. 95 14. http://www.ccel.org... 15. https://www.biblegateway.com... 16. http://www.biblestudy.org...