Demolishing Triablogue: Skeptics are reasonable to complain that Matthew doesn't testify of his own faith

This is my reply to an article by Jason Engwer of Triablogue entitled:

Why Doesn't Matthew Say More About His Conversion?

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

In another thread about Matthew's authorship of the gospel attributed to him, a commenter wrote:

Hi Jason, the first person I heard use Mt 9:9-13 to challenge Matthean authorship of The Gospel According to Matthew was Richard Bauckham. It has long troubled me. The external evidence highly favors the view that the apostle Matthew wrote the gospel attributed to him, but it seems so counterintuitive that Matthew would use Mark’s account of his own conversion rather than write his own. That is the one place you would expect him to pen his own unique account. You rightly point out that Matthew did not copy Mark verbatim, but the differences are so miniscule (no greater than in most other places where Matthew uses Mark) as to be relatively insignificant. Minor changes to Mark’s account of Matthew’s own conversion is not what we would expect at all. It’s the most personal element of his story. He adds lots of non-Markan material throughout the rest of His gospel on matters he may not have even witnessed Himself, so why use Mark’s version of his own conversion story rather than telling his own story in his own way with a lot more detail? It doesn’t seem probable and counts against Matthean authorship in my mind. How do you reconcile this?

You can find a collection of some of my material on Matthean authorship linked in a post here. Steve Hays has written some posts on the subject as well, like here. Here's my response to the commenter quoted above:

See my earlier article I linked above, the one here. If Matthew delegated the composition of his gospel to one or more other individuals, then it’s not a matter of what Matthew wrote. It's a matter of what others wrote on his behalf, with his approval of the final product.

Except that you have no fucking clue whether Matthew ever did "approve" of any such thing, or simply walked away, trusting his friends to 'get it right'.

That was a common practice in the ancient world, and it's common today (ghost writers, group authorship, editorial assistants, research assistants, etc.).
However, even if Matthew hadn't operated that way, where did Mark's account of Matthew's conversion come from?

You elsewhere accept as true the patristic accounts that say Mark is a record of Peter's preaching, so your own answer would (or should) be "Peter's preaching".

If it came from Matthew (with or without intermediaries), which is a reasonable scenario, then why think the account found in Matthew's gospel should differ more from the account found in the gospel of Mark?

Yes, IF IF IF he got the story from Matthew, we wouldn't expect significant changes.  That's a pretty big if.

But then maybe we would expect an apostolic author who was "amazingly transformed" by seeing the risen Christ, to wish to say something about his own personal experience...just like we rationally expect all serious Christians to testify.  So since nothing of the sort shows up in the gospel called "Matthew" that can be reasonably counted against Matthean authorship.  Especially if it was written in 55 a.d., which means Matthew still doesn't want to give his personal input even after 20 years of developing the Jesus-sayings and traditions.

You suggest that Matthew should have included "a lot more detail" about his conversion. Why?

Because most serious Christians have a personal testimony which they wish to tell, and this is consistent with most of the NT authors.

And because he would know that leaving his own personal details out might cause readers to wonder whether he was "amazingly transformed".  The reasonablenes of these concerns cannot be trashed merely because it's always going to be "possible" that an amazingly transformed person might have their own reasons for not giving their personal testimony. You don't win the historiography debate by positing mere possibilities.

He wasn't writing in a modern American context, in which individualism, writing lengthy accounts of your experiences, and such were as popular as they are in our culture.

But desire to write of one's own personal religious experience isn't limited to modern America.  Read acts and the pastorals.

Even the vast majority of liberal scholars think that Paul wrote several of the letters attributed to him, yet Paul didn't provide "a lot more detail" about his conversion in those letters, including the letters where his conversion is mentioned.

But Paul still provided some personalized details about his life and commission.  That's more than Matthew.

And Paul's conversion was in some ways more significant than Matthew's.

When you forget that Matthew allegedly was hand-picked by the real earthly Jesus and studied under him for three year of real-world time, yes.  But some people would insist that the sheer improbability and absurdity of Paul's "partially empirical" experience on the road to Damascus is completely unworthy of serious attention.  Paul has precisely nothing but a vision and his own desire to hold apostolic office independent of the original apostles.  At least Matthew allegedly had authority that wasn't this controversial.

If Matthew was asked to compose a gospel in response to the popularity of Mark's gospel, which I think is most likely what happened,

Sounds like Matthew denied Mark's sufficiency and inerrancy. 

then the people who approached Matthew about writing a gospel probably would have been people who already knew a lot about him, including his conversion. Besides, he was writing a biography of Jesus, not a biography of Matthew.

Paul wasn't writing a biography of Paul in any of his letters, but we still expect, and receive personal details from him.

For me the issue is less why Matthew follows Mark's version of Matthew's "calling", and more an issue of whether Matthew's lack of personal stories and lessons makes it reasonable to assume the author had no such stories to tell.

Demolishing Triablogue: The Jewish objection to the empty tomb is a reasonable justification for skepticism

This is my reply to an article by Jason Engwer of Triablogue entitled

Early Jewish Acknowledgment Of The Empty Tomb

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

A few early Christian sources tell us that their Jewish opponents acknowledged that Jesus' tomb was found empty after the body had been placed there. Were the later sources just repeating what the first one, Matthew, told them?
Even if so, there's no good reason to reject Matthew's report.

You are blindly assuming we are obligated to believe anything we read in ancient religious history unless somebody comes along and proves the source unreliable.  You are high on crack.  I have about as much intellectual obligation to believe Matthew's report as I have to believe 1st Enoch.  You couldn't demonstrate the unreasonableness of complete apathy toward the gospels if your life depended on it.  FUCK YOU.

The gospel seems to have been written by a Jew and seems to have been written for an audience with a lot of knowledge of Judaism, Israel, and other elements of Christianity's early Jewish context.

Which is precisely why Matthew's failure to say anything that might support apostle Paul is telling.  Matthew was a Judaizer.

R.T. France notes that the idea of non-Jewish authorship of the gospel "enjoyed quite a vogue" during the third quarter of the twentieth century, "but is now not widely supported" (The Gospel Of Matthew [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2007], n. 26 on p. 15).

Ok, then you cannot complain if a skeptic bases some of their reasonableness-arguments on the fact that some belief is "widely accepted".

Grant Osborne comments that "One major consensus is that Matthew writes a Jewish gospel." (Matthew [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2010], p. 31) Matthew comments that acknowledgment of the empty tomb by Jewish opponents of Christianity originated just after Jesus' death and existed "to this day" (Matthew 28:15), a claim that easily could have been falsified if untrue.

You are blindly assuming that the Christians made such a big spectacle of the resurrection preaching that opponents would have cared enough to "refute" it.  Since Acts is a combination of history and fiction, I don't really give a fuck if it presents the Jews as angry at Christian preaching.  And it is far from certain that the Jews would have known which exact tomb Jesus was buried in.  Must it be that Joseph of Arimathea told them where it was?  Must it be that the cemetery was crowded with people when Joe was putting Jesus inside the tomb?

And like so much else in Christian history, it remains possible that the Jews DID falsify the empty tomb theory, but accounts of this were suppressed or destroyed (at least one wasn't, Justin knew of such account).   Indeed, the Jews could have done such a thing in less than one day's time, and there's no reason to suppose a written record of that would have been made or would have survived.  So quit implying the impossibility of the skeptical theory.

And of course, Jesus' resurrection can be falsified on numerous grounds independent of your trifles about the empty tomb.  IMO, the only reason there was early tradition about Jesus being buried in a rich man's tomb was because this was a fiction invented to make his death conform more to Isaiah 53.  Under stupid apologist reasoning, skeptics have no reasonable choice except to believe anything that is "multiply attested"...such as Matthean priority.

William Lane Craig discusses some other evidence that Matthew's account is reliable.

Around the middle of the second century, Matthew's account is corroborated by a passage in Justin Martyr in which he seems to quote from a Jewish source on the subject.

Gee, 1st Enoch also "corroborates" Genesis 6.

In section 108 of his Dialogue With Trypho, Justin seems to cite a Jewish document or tradition, in which Jesus is referred to as a "deceiver" and reference is made to Jesus as Him "whom we crucified", apparently speaking from the perspective of non-Christian Jews ("we"). This passage in Justin contains multiple details not found in Matthew's gospel. For example, Michael Slusser's edition of Justin has him referring to how the Jews "chose certain men by vote and sent them throughout the whole civilized world" in order to argue against Christianity, including by accusing the disciples of stealing the body from the tomb (Dialogue With Trypho [Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University Of America Press, 2003], p. 162). It's not as though people would have been dependent solely on Matthew for information on such subjects. Justin had more than Matthew's account to go by. And he seems to be quoting some sort of Jewish document or tradition.

It may well have been that the Jews said the disciples stole the body.  I don't see the problem, as that's a very reasonable criticism, since Christians cannot deny that at least some of the original players knew where Jesus was originally buried (Matthew 27:61).  So you cannot deny their ability to steal the body.  Then we also have a motive to steal the body if we assume historicity of the accounts in Acts.  You will insist they were cowards without a motive at Jesus' crucifixion, but I don't believe everything in the gospels the way you do.  Such stories of cowards can easily be accounted for by the theory that by making them into cowards, their "transformation" upon seeing Jesus seems more dramatic.

You will say they wouldn't have stolen the body because they later died for their beliefs as martyrs.  But the best that can be gleaned from such legends is that the apostles were executed for being Christians.  I'm not aware of any reliable accounts that say any apostle was given a chance to deny Christ and live.  So the fact they were executed, if true, does not increase the probability that they endured such death willingly.  But since I say the original bodily resurrection story was rooted in nothing but visions, we are dealing with fanatics who could easily deceive themselves so much as to be willing to die for beliefs that had no external corroboration.

Are you willing to die for Jesus?

And yet you are not an eyewitness, right?  See how that works?  You CAN get to the point of having a martyrdom complex even when you have no first-hand knowledge.

Justin is familiar with many Jewish responses to Christianity, as his interactions with their scripture interpretations, for example, demonstrate. He "shows acquaintance with rabbinical discussions" (ibid., n. 9 on p. 33). Bruce Chilton writes that Justin "appears to adapt motifs of Judaism", and Rebecca Lyman comments that Justin "is aware of Samaritan customs as well as some patterns of rabbinic exegesis" (in Sara Parvis and Paul Foster, edd., Justin Martyr And His Worlds [Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 2007], pp. 83, 163). He wasn't just repeating what he read in the New Testament documents. He's aware of Jewish arguments outside of those reflected in the New Testament, and he's aware of post-apostolic developments in Judaism. His willingness to compose a work as lengthy as his Dialogue With Trypho tells us something about his interest in Jewish arguments against Christianity.
Though Justin wrote around the middle of the second century, he sets his dispute with Trypho earlier, around the year 135. And the Jewish tradition he's citing in the passage I mentioned above would date even earlier.

So?  I don't see anything unreasonable in accusing the disciples of stealing the body, as I take the gospel descriptions of the post-crucifixion disciples as cowards, to be mere hyperbole or straight up lying, since the gospels also expect us to believe they were obstinately stupid even after watching Jesus perform genuinely supernatural stunts for three years.

If you think "multiple attestation" proves me wrong, then apparently you are a dipshit who is not aware of how a single false belief can take root and become repeated by thousands of others.  See Acts 21:18-24.  Multiple attestation is not a worthless criteria, but you push it too god-damn hard and act as if skeptics have nowhere to run as soon as one report is "corroborated".

And since most Christian scholars posit a theory of literary interdependence between the Synoptics, it is less likely these are three independent witnesses to disciple cowardice and only one report that is merely being repeated with fictional modification by the later gospels.

  You also don't acknowledge that two contrary positions can be equally reasonable, probably because you have no objective criteria for reasonableness.  Probably because if you did, you'd eventually have to explain why most professional historians don't find the gospel narratives particularly believable.

Late in the second century, Tertullian summarizes Jewish arguments concerning the empty tomb:
"This is He whom His disciples secretly stole away, that it might be said He had risen again, or the gardener abstracted, that his lettuces might come to no harm from the crowds of visitants!" (The Shows, 30)
Notice that Tertullian mentions something that neither Matthew nor Justin had reported.

Which means we have no choice but to accept it as gospel truth.

Apparently, the argument that the disciples stole the body was still the primary Jewish response.

Which is reason enough to take the Jewish response seriously, instead of dismissing it with "the Jews sure did care about Christianity immediately after Jesus died!  Wouldn't they have exhumed the body and put forth all that effort to suppress the resurrection message!?!"

But some Jews had argued that the body was moved by a gardener, perhaps because of how implausible the argument for theft by the disciples had become in light of the suffering and martyrdom of the disciples.

No, you cannot historically justify saying the disciples were "martyred".  It could very well be that in addition to the correct theory, another theory to explain the empty tomb became popular.  1st century Palestine was a hotbed of false rumor.  Read Josephus.  Early Christianity was a hot-bed of fictional claims that attracted ignorant converts.  Read the pastorals.

Keep in mind that the argument that the disciples stole the body originated before any of the disciples died as martyrs and before they had suffered much. The argument was better early on than it would become later.

No, you find the Jews declaring the "disciples stole the body" argument in Matthew, then you blindly assume the Jews were saying such things in 34 a.d.  But most scholars date Matthew to 70 a.d., which is right when most of the apostles would have already died.  That is, the author safely delayed his accusations of what Jews were saying in 34 a.d. until the actual Jews that would know better, were likely dead.

Now what are you going to do?  Suddenly discover that Matthew was  published in 34 a.d.?

It should also be noted that Tertullian, like Justin, wrote an entire treatise against Judaism (An Answer To The Jews). The idea that he would have been dependent solely on Matthew for his knowledge of the Jewish response to the Christian claim about the empty tomb is unlikely.

So?  Once again, I think accusing the disciples of stealing the body is reasonable, and so would anybody else who is objective and doesn't blindly insist on biblical inerrancy, or misunderstand rules of historiography as infallible guides.

All three of these early Christian sources include information not mentioned by the others. All three would have had easy access to the Judaism of their day, and they all show interest in interacting with Jewish arguments against Christianity. Matthew and Justin are making highly public claims that could easily have been discerned to be false if they had been false (e.g., "to this day" in Matthew, men "sent throughout the whole civilized world" in Justin).

And since most scholars date Matthew to 70 .a.d., we are reasonable to say the earliest date Matthew publicized such story of Jewish scheming was 70 a.d.  You have no fucking clue the extent to which Matthew's oral preaching repeated anything in his written gospel.  But I'm sure you will pretend that the only reasonable conclusion is that he would have preached every bit of the written form....something that would identify him as a Judaizer and opponent of Paul.

And once again, you continue pretending that the the earliest Christian resurrection preaching would have bothered the Jews enough for them to desire to go exhume Jesus' body, when in fact it is likely they would not wish to rob such grave, it was illegal, and they'd need Roman permission which likely wouldn't be granted.

 I also believe the original resurrection belief was "visionary", so that the Jews would be even less worried to "refute" such mindless bullshit.

All three include information unlikely to have been made up by a Christian (see Craig's article about Matthew; Justin seems to be citing a Jewish source; Tertullian or a Christian source he relied on probably wouldn't have made up an alternate argument about the removal of Jesus' body that avoids the main problem with the theft argument). For reasons like these, and because there isn't any good argument to the contrary, it seems likely that there was early and widespread Jewish acknowledgment of the empty tomb.

Except that the earliest gospel, Mark, candidly acknowledges that an anonymous "man" wearing a "white robe" was at the open tomb and had been there for some time before the first witnesses, the women, got there.   You'll kindly pardon me if

a) I don't get "angel" out of "white robe" or "man", and
b) I have an alternative theory that this man moved the body, and Mark has simply morphed a grave-robbery story into a resurrection story.

The pastorals and Acts 21 make it clear that the earliest Christians had a habit of making up false claims and successfully hoodwinking thousands of others about what the apostles did.

Demolishing Triablogue: Significant Resurrection Narratives Did Not Come From Sources Who Were Named And Known

This is my reply to an article by Jason Engwer of Triablogue entitled

The Resurrection Narratives Came From Sources Who Were Named And Known

"All four Gospels are anonymous in the formal sense that the author's name does not appear in the text of the work itself, only in the title (which we will discuss below).

Which is a problem since most NT authors and 1st century historians did include their names in the text of their writings despite in most cases their intended audiences already knowing who they were.  So you can kiss your predictable "they didn't mention their names because they already knew their audiences" excuse goodbye.

Therefore, we can be reasonable to conclude that the gospel authors intentionally broke with standard practice, therefore, we can be reasonable to conclude they didn't want to be identified, therefore, we can be reasonable to conclude that desire to identify them only started with later generations.  We can therefore be reasonable to conclude that we cannot possibly go wrong in fulfilliing the author's desires, and refusing to discuss their identifies, if we so choose.

And if god inspired the gospel authors, then god also didn't want them to include their names in those works, which means God is less interested in proving the human authorship of the gospels than today's apologists are.  Hence it can be reasonable for the atheist to conclude that any "god" that might exist, wanted the written testimony to Jesus' resurrection to be of more dubious origin than as wished by today's apologists.  Whose wishes are more important to respect?

But this does not mean that they were intentionally anonymous. Many ancient works were anonymous in the same formal sense, and the name may not even appear in the surviving title of the work. For example, this is true of Lucian's Life of Demonax (Demonactos bios), which as a bios (ancient biography) is generically comparable with the Gospels. Yet Lucian speaks throughout in the first person and obviously expects his readers to know who he is.

And by speaking in the first person, that much is clear.  Unfortunately for you, none of the 4 gospels speaks in the first person.  They always characterize the apostles in the third-person. It doesn't matter how you can spin that, and it doesn't matter that eyewitnesses "can" use third person, this doesn't automatically mean "eyewitness who is choosing to use the third-person".  Third-person narrative usually automatically implies "the author was not one of the story characters", and the burden is rightfully on the fundie to overcome such presumption.  You certainly cannot seriously say skeptics are unreasonable to infer anonymous authorship from the third-person writing style.  Especially in light of the fact that we naturally and justifiably expect honest eyewitnesses to make it clear to the listeners that what they have to say is their own story, instead of asking the listeners to make imperfect judgment calls about how much tesitmony is "eyewitness" and how much is "later redactor modified this and modified that".

Such works would often have been circulated in the first instance among friends or acquaintances of the author who would know who the author was from the oral context in which the work was first read.

But that didn't stop apostle Paul and most other NT authors from identifying themselves.  You may not like the fact that the gospel authors bucked the trend, because of the skeptical inferences that can be justified therefrom, but that's tough shit.

Knowledge of authorship would be passed on when copies were made for other readers, and the name would be noted, with a brief title, on the outside of the scroll or on a label affixed to the scroll.

That would also be true even if the belief about the author were merely the earlier copyist's best guess.

In denying that the Gospels were originally anonymous, our intention is to deny that they were first presented as works without authors.

Then you aren't combating my specific type of gospel skepticism. I can allow for apostles authoring originals without putting myself under intellectual obligation to credit the final canonical form entirely to said apostles.  But if it is reasonable to say that various portions of the gospels originally came from later redactors, that is sufficient to justify skepticism toward their resurrection narratives, especially in light of the fact that scholars cannot agree on which portions of the gospels reveal redactional activity.

This idea that we have to show absolute anonymity before we can be reasonable to deny apostolic authorship, is total bullshit.  Life is far more complex than what you get walking into a church...or a preschool.

The clearest case is Luke because of the dedication of the work to Theophilus (1:3), probably a patron.

Which is also a point of unending debate, since Theophilus could also be a mere metaphor for the entire church.

But even assuming it was a real individual person, the reasonable assumption is that Luke intended to write for that guy, and the burden is on YOU to show that Luke intended for anybody else to read that work (by which argument scumbag apologists suddenly discover the infallibility of saying Theophilus was a metaphor for a large group of people).  As I've argued elsewhere, when you say the gospels were inspired by God, you are making reasonable those who attribute to god's own will any of the human author's discernible intent.  Unless you are a Calvinist and insist that just whatever happens is surely within the will of God, you cannot leap from "popular!" to "intended for the world!".  Luke appears intended for the church, as it makes no effort to rebut the kind of objections skeptics would have made in the 1st century (i.e., Jesus' miracles are just tricks employed by hundreds of other "faith-healers", sometimes involving dishonest assistants and third persons).

It is inconceivable that a work with a named dedicatee should have been anonymous.

Not "inconceivable" if the author already knew the dedicatee.

The author's name may have featured in an original title, but in any case would have been known to the dedicatee and other first readers because the author would have presented the book to the dedicatee....In the first century CE, most authors gave their books titles, but the practice was not universal....

In the first century, most authors also identified themselves in the text of their work, and most NT authors do so, therefore, we are reasonable to conclude that the gospel authors made a deliberate choice to avoid associating their names with their stories.  Not exactly the definition of "reliable".

Whether or not any of these titles originate from the authors themselves, the need for titles that distinguished one Gospel from another would arise as soon as any Christian community had copies of more than one in its library and was reading more than one in its worship meetings....In the case of codices, 'labels appeared on all possible surfaces: edges, covers, and spines.' In this sense also, therefore, Gospels would not have been anonymous when they first circulated around the churches.

Even if you are correct, the very fact that Jerome says "many" in the early church thought the Gospel to the Hebrews was "authentic Matthew" shows how little usefulness there was in the original gospels naming their authors...unless you wish to credit Matthew as the author of that heretical work?

A church receiving its first copy of one such would have received with it information, at least in oral form, about its authorship and then used its author's name when labeling the book and when reading from it in worship....no evidence exists that these Gospels were ever known by other names." (Richard Bauckham, Jesus And The Eyewitnesses [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2006], pp. 300-301, 303)

But you don't know if they ever did so "label", you don't know how long they waited before producing the copies that might motivate them to attach labels, and yet it is equally reasonable to suppose that the oral tradition about the author is all the individual church community thought was necessary for several decades.

But again, so what?  The fact that all church fathers never testify to a Greek Matthew but only Hebrew until Jerome makes it reasonable to assume they did not have any tradition that Matthew authored anything in Greek.  You don't make that reasonableness disappear merely by trifling that maybe they just miraculously chose to focus only on the Hebrew original.  Those were mostly Gentile churches, where the Greek Matthew would be used more had it been believed authored by Matthew.

"Nevertheless the fact remains that it is utterly improbable that in this dark period, at a particular place or through a person or through the decision of a group or institution unknown to us, the four superscriptions of the Gospels, which had hitherto been circulating anonymously, suddenly came into being and, without leaving behind traces of earlier divergent titles, became established throughout the church.

I'm not one of those who say the gospel titles suddenly came into being at a late stage.  And once again, Matthew likely authored a less detailed "sayings-source", and this + anonymous scribe creating a Greek edition is why Matthew's name now appears on canonical Greek Matthew.

None of these trifles increase the probability that the gospel resurrection narratives escaped scribal modification, and if they didn't, then the gospel resurrection narratives lose significant historical value, since we are forced to conclude that at least some resurrection testimony has also been modified by later scribes.

Nevermind that more and more conservative inerrantists are admitting to Matthew mingling history and fiction in his resurrection narrative (i.e. "fiction" = "apocalyptic imagery").

Let those who deny the great age and therefore basically the originality of the Gospel superscriptions in order to preserve their 'good' critical conscience, give a better explanation of the completely unanimous and relatively early attestation of these titles, their origin and the names of authors associated with them.

I accept your challenge.  As far as Matthew, he likely authored a Hebrew sayings-source that was later reworked into Greek by a redactor who added substantial blocks of "narrative", so that Matthew's resurrection testimony is infected with hearsay of unknown extent, rendering the skeptic reasonable, if they choose, to disregard it.

As far as Mark, I can allow that a guy named Mark wrote it, and Mark's tendency to abandon the ministry to the point that Paul didn't deem him a worthy missionary (Acts 15:38) might help explain why he deserted his own gospel and made Jesus' resurrection one of the least important aspects.  The more Mark copied from Peter's preaching, the more "hearsay" it is, and since we cannot reasonably determine Mark's relation to Peter beyond debateable references in the NT, we have no reasonable way to gauge the reliability of such hearsay, thus justifying a skeptic, if they choose, to disregard it.

As far as Luke, if most Christian scholars are correct that Luke copies off Mark, then Luke was lying by omission in saying he consulted with eyewitnesses, since he leaves the impression that everything in his gospel about Jesus draws from eyewitness sources.  Mark was not an eyewitness of Jesus' ministry, especially if the fundies are correct that Mark is just a record of Peter's later preaching in Rome.

As far as John, enough Christian scholars admit much of what he puts in Jesus mouth was never actually mouthed by Jesus, to render reasonable the skeptic who says apostle John's authorship only hurts that gospel's reliability.

Such an explanation has yet to be given, and it never will be.

Bang on the pulpit, and yell "bless ma soul".

New Testament scholars persistently overlook basic facts and questions on the basis of old habits." (Martin Hengel, The Four Gospels And The One Gospel Of Jesus Christ [Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Trinity Press International, 2000], p. 55)

Wow, if even NT scholars "persistently" get things wrong, one reasonable option for a skeptic to exercise is to simply toss all NT scholarship in the trash as too complicated and convoluted for them to reasonably believe they will ever be able to draw reasonably certain conclusions beyond what Jesus' gender was.

And since Triablogue says a lifetime of neutrality toward Jesus cannot protect the unbeliever from hell,  the skeptic who exercise the above-stated option may as well avoid neutrality and tell himself David Hume already proved that miracles are impossible. Life is more fun if you go around thinking you'll never be held accountable by an invisible man living in the sky.  It's also easier to sleep at night when you don't think there is a monster living under your bed.

Demolishing Triablogue: Matthew did not write the gospel attributed to him

This is my reply to an article by Jason Engwer of Triablogue, entitled

Did Matthew Write The Gospel Attributed To Him?

Saturday, May 25, 2013

This is a typical way of downplaying the significance of Matthew's gospel:

The arguments for such downlplaying that you now cite to, are often made by Christian scholars.  Just wanted to make sure your readers didn't get the false impression that its only atheists who argue that way.

When the reader is told that Matthew likely authored a Hebrew original and the Hebrew is the only one the church fathers refer to until 4th century Jerome, many of the "evidences" for "Matthean authorship" of canonical Greek Matthew lose force.  After all, its a bit more complex than just whether Matthew wrote something in Greek.  We can relate Matthew to canonical Greek Matthew in a way that does reasonable justice to the external evidence, but without thereby showing Matthew was the sole author.  If there is more than one person involved in the authorship of canonical Greek Matthew, then the historical value of 'Matthew's' resurrection testimony wanes somewhat accordingly.  You don't just say "some parts of my affidavit were updated and modified by anonymous third-parties and translated into a different language" and yet expect others to think the document correctly represents everything you alleged in your original.

"We do not know the name of its author: the title found in our English versions ('The Gospel according to Matthew') was added long after the document's original composition.

 The author's failure to do what most NT authors and 1st century historians did, and include his name despite his audience already knowing it, is significant, and justifies the skeptic to say such authorial intent likely also expresses the allegeldy 'divine' intent...which means you might be acting contrary to the will of God in pushing Matthew's authorship.

It is true that according to an old tradition the author was none other than Matthew, the tax collector mentioned in Matt 9:9. This tradition, however, arose some decades after the Gospel itself had been published, and scholars today have reasons to doubt its accuracy.

Exactly how "early" that gospel was attributed to Matthew, cannot be known.  All you can do is find an earliest church father from around 125 a.d. mentioning a gospel of Matthew or "memoirs of the apostles" and triumphantly conclude that an interval of 80 years between Jesus' crucifixion and such early patristic reference is too trivial to justify fear of the gospel titles being the result of rumors.  The more you speak that foolishly, the more you justify apostolic authorship of the earliest non-canonical gospels.

For one thing, the author never identifies himself as Matthew, either in 9:9 or anywhere else.

So that under your own theory that this gospel was inspired by God, the best theory to expalin why the author didn't identify himself is beause god didn't want him to. Wow, I guess it never occurred to you that pushing Matthew's authorship might be contrary to the will of god.

Also, certain features of this Gospel make it difficult to believe that this Matthew could have been the author. Why, for example, would someone who had spent so much time with Jesus rely on another author (Mark) for nearly two-thirds of his stories, often repeating them word for word (including the story of his own call to discipleship; 9:9-13)?

That's called the Markan priority theory, one that I adopt, along with the majority of Christian scholars, and that alone is sufficient to justify concluding that such theory is "reasonable" even if not "guaranteed truth".  That is, your trifles against Markan priority do not foist any intellectual obligation upon a skeptic to either refute your objections or admit Markan priority loses.  Under your stupid trifling demeanor, nobody could ever be reasonable to write a book defending any bible scholarly opinion, because the necessarily limit to the size of the book necessarily means they'd have to avoid dealing with certain objections.

And why would he never authenticate his account by indicating that he himself had seen these things take place?

Maybe because, like many Christian scholars explain about Paul's anonymous authorship of Hebrews...he was scared that putting his name on something would cause his intended audience to turn away?  It's what we call "provide things honest in the sight of all men" and "it is not you but god who giveth the increase".

…Since he produced his Gospel in Greek, presumably for a Greek-speaking community, he was probably located somewhere outside Palestine…

That's weak since Greek was spoken also in Palestine.

Matthew, an anonymous Jewish leader of the Christian community (assuming that his strong literary skills, indicative of a higher education, gave him a place of prominence there), penned a Gospel narrative to show that Jesus was in fact the Jewish messiah, who like Moses gave the law of God to his people." (Bart Ehrman, The New Testament [New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2012], 114-115, 132) 

Ehrman doesn't know that the title of the gospel wasn't added until "long after" the document's composition. See, for example, Martin Hengel's discussion of the gospel titles in The Four Gospels And The One Gospel Of Jesus Christ (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Trinity Press International, 2000). Hengel gives a series of reasons why the titles probably would have been included early on.

Except that even conservative inerrantist Christian scholars, despite how they could profit from such trifling, nevertheless stick with saying the gospel titles were probably added later.  For example, Craig Blomberg argues:

Strictly speaking, this Gospel, like all four canonical Gospels, is anonymous. The titles, “The Gospel according to X,” are almost certainly not original. It is doubtful that four early Christians would all choose this identical wording and far more probable that the documents were given these headings in order to distinguish one from the other only when they were first combined into a fourfold collection. The diversity of ways in which these titles are phrased among the existing manuscripts (“According to Matthew,” “The Gospel according to Matthew,” “The Gospel according to Matthew beginning with God,” “The Holy Gospel according to Matthew,” “From the [Gospel] according to Matthew”) reinforces this supposition.⁶¹ Probably these headings were first added some time in the late first or early second century. But apart from these ascriptions, nothing in the actual text of the Gospel ever specifically discloses its author.

61 For the Greek titles and manuscripts in which they occur, see Allison and Davies, Matthew, 1:129, n. 90.

Blomberg, C. (2001, c1992). Vol. 22: Matthew (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 43). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

If Engwer chooses to disagree with Blomberg, that's fine but then the skeptic could correctly trivilaize Christianity by observing that NOT EVEN WHEN YOU ACCEPT JESUS, ADOPT INERRANCY AND EVENTUALLY BECOME A LEGITIMATELY CREDENTIALED RESPECTABLE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR WHO SPECIALIZES IN THE HISTORICAL RELIABILITY OF THE GOSPELS, WILL YOU BE ABLE TO SEE GOSPEL TRUTH.

For example, after more than one gospel was circulating, the gospels would need to be distinguished from one another.

Not if they were originally written for separate communities, as most scholars believe was the case.  What you are talking about wouldn't be a concern until the church began to collectively desire to canonize several gospels.

When critics like Ehrman suggest that Matthew used Mark as a source, they don't seem to realize that their argument in that context works against their argument that Matthew wouldn't have had a title until "long after" its composition. If the author of Matthew knew of Mark and thought so highly of the document as to use so much of it, then he and his earliest readers would have wanted a way, probably multiple ways, to quickly and easily distinguish each gospel from other documents in general and from other gospels in particular.

Or maybe Matthew was intended to 'correct' Mark (which I've shown he usually does) and produce something better so as to allow for tossing Mark in the trash, in which case there can be no rational motive to carefully distinguish the authors.

A title would allow people to quickly and easily distinguish one gospel from another.

In the later period when some of the gospels started gaining authority beyond their originally intended audiences, yes.

That would be important, for instance, in church services in which gospels were being read, a context in which quickly and easily distinguishing among the gospels would be desirable.

Only by assuming the Matthew author intended for his people to use Mark alongside his own production, when in fact his corrections to Mark make it reasonable to suppose he intended to supplant Mark.  The church Matthew intended to write for is thus left with one single updated gospel.

Furthermore, both private and public libraries used titles to distinguish one work from another.

Yes.

And so on. If you read Hengel's book, you'll see that there are multiple reasons why the gospels probably would have had titles applied to them early, most likely during the first century, when apostles and their contemporaries were still alive.

Well gee, then why did Jerome say "many" in the early church thought Gospel to the Hebrews was "authentic Matthew"?

“There is a Gospel,” he says, “which the Nazarenes and Ebionites use, which I lately translated from the Hebrew tongue into Greek and which is called by many the authentic Gospel of Matthew”. [1]

[1] Commentary on Matthew 12:13, from Orr, J., M.A., D.D. (1999). The International standard Bible encyclopedia : 1915 edition (J. Orr, Ed.). Albany, OR: Ages Software.

Does the presence of the word "authentic" reasonably imply that those "many" knew of inauthentic gospels being credited to Matthew?  Does the word "authentic" reasonably imply those "many" did some type of investigation and concluded GoH was more likely authored by Matthew?  Or do your common-sense sounding arguments suddenly become Stupid of the Year whenever they can be used to support apostolic authorship of gospels that aren't in your favorite collection?

See my quotations of Richard Bauckham and Martin Hengel here, and read their books for further information.
How does Ehrman allegedly know that the tradition of Matthean authorship "arose some decades after the Gospel itself had been published"? The earliest extant report of that tradition is in Papias, writing in the early second century about information he attained at an unknown earlier date. But the timing of the earliest tradition report extant today need not be equivalent to the timing of the earliest tradition.

True, but that kind of trifle doesn't foist an intellectual obligation upon a skeptic.  All you are doing is bleating about possibiltiies.  If a skeptic doesn't accuse you of taking an illogical position, you have no business citing to bare possibilities.  You either show that your own preferred possibility has more probability than the skeptical theory, or you lose the debate.  FUCK YOU.

Think of the absurdity of the situation implied by Ehrman. Not only did people wait until "long after" Matthew's composition to give the work a title, but they also waited until "some decades" later to start claiming that Matthew wrote it.

There's nothing absurd about that under the other Christian theory that the Matthew-author wrote for a specific congregation.  We would expect such congregation to use his gospel for at least two decades, never seeing any need to place a title on it.

 Yet, attribution of the document to Matthew was universal and was corroborated by a diverse series of non-Christian sources from the second century onward.

It was also "universal" that Matthew wrote first, a theory now discredited by most Christian scholars, who hold to Markan priority.  It would also be reasonable for a skeptic to conclude the "universal" attribution to Matthew was little more than later church fathers blindly following Papias.

Is that sort of early and widespread acceptance of Matthean authorship better explained by Ehrman's scenario or a traditional Christian view?

Gee, what best explains the fact that "many" in the early church took GoH to be "authentic" Matthew?  Was it possible for "many" in the early church to be deceived about gospel authorship?  If so, how many wrongful opinions had to be held by "many" before one opinion wrongfully achieved the status of orthodoxy?

Why would a document that circulated anonymously for decades become universally accepted as Matthean, with corroboration from non-Christian sources, leaving no trace of dispute?

Fallacy of loaded question, Jerome documents the dispute by saying "many" viewed GoH as "authentic" Matthew.

To make matters worse for Ehrman, he claims that the author of the gospel was a "leader" with "prominence". But this prominent leader's work circulated anonymously? Why?

I don't have to answer that question, as I don't agree with Ehrman on the point.

And his identity was universally forgotten and universally replaced with Matthew's identity so early?

No, most likely Matthew wrote a sayings-source in Hebrew, and an anonymous scribe was later responsible for translating it into Greek and adding narrative.  That way, the work is called "Matthew", but only because Matthew had limited relation to the contents.

I'm reminded of Donald Guthrie's reference to "those modern schools of criticism which have peopled early Christian history with a whole army of unknown writers, whose works attained as great a prominence as their authors obtained obscurity." (The Logos Library System: Deluxe Collection [Oak Harbor, Washington: Logos Research Systems, 1997], New Testament Introduction)
Ehrman asks us to solve problems of his own creation. Reject his dubious assumptions, and you won't have to face his contrived problems.

I've done rather well justifying skepticism in light of your defense, even assuming Ehrman was wrong.

He suggests that if the apostle Matthew wrote the gospel, he would have identified himself as an eyewitness. Why think Matthew didn't identify himself by a document title or an oral report of authorship that accompanied the book's circulation, for example?

Because skeptics try to prioritize any theory that can be based on evidence, instead of on a theory that requires manufacturing evidence out of thin air.  There is no historical evidence that Matthew identified himself by document or "oral report" (gospel preaching doesn't require the preacher to give his name, only the gospel), nor that any such thing accompanied the book's circulation.

I've addressed the issue of Matthew's use of Mark's gospel here. Under my view, a "word for word" (as Ehrman puts it) repetition of Mark wouldn't be a problem.

But it remains reasonable to say we don't expect a person with their own first-hand experiences, to depend so heavily upon a non-eyewitness source for documenting these.

And I don't see how skepticism suffers in the least by admitting Matthew authored an original in Hebrew.  We can agree on that, except that I think the Hebrew original was mostly "sayings", not narrative, and I agree with inerrantist Christian scholar Craig Blomberg that an anonymous scribe later reworked the entire thing in Greek.

But if he wrote only an Aramaic precursor to the Gospel, then any Gentile Christian could have been responsible for Greek Matthew as well, though interestingly the tide of scholarship is again strongly returning to a Jewish Christian as the author of the final form of this Gospel, even if many remain reluctant to identify the apostle as the specific Jewish Christian, Matthew.

...When all the evidence is amassed, there appears no conclusive proof for the apostle Matthew as author but no particularly cogent reason to deny this uniform early church tradition. Were the Gospel not written by him, the church surely chose a rather strange individual (in light of his unscrupulous past by Jewish standards) as a candidate for authorship. Without any ancient traditions to the contrary, Matthew remains the most plausible choice for author. This author, at least of an original draft of this book (or one of its major sources), seems quite probably to have been the converted toll collector, also named Levi, who became one of Jesus’ twelve apostles (cf. 10:3; 9:9–13; Mark 2:14–17).
But again we present these conclusions tentatively.

Blomberg, C. (2001, c1992). Vol. 22: Matthew (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 44). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

Engwer continues:

But is Matthew 9:9-13, a passage Ehrman singles out, actually a word for word repetition of Mark 2:14-17? No.

Doesn't have to be word-for-word.  Under Markan priority, they are similarly worded because the Matthew author is copying off of Mark.  Since it would be absurd to suppose Matthew himself wished to depend upon a non-eyewitness to tell the reader about Matthew's own calling to discipleship, it's reasonable, even if not infallible, to say the Matthew-author is not Matthew himself.

In fact, scholars often point to differences among the parallel Synoptic accounts as evidence for Matthean authorship or as a potential explanation for how a mistaken Christian belief in authorship by Matthew arose. (E.g., Matthew 9:9 refers to "Matthew", whereas Mark 2:14 and Luke 5:27 refer to "Levi".

Some church fathers thought Levi and Matthew were separate apostles, so it might be reasonable to conclude that Mark's "Levi" was originally supposed to be somebody different than "Matthew", despite the tendency of most Christains to automatically equate them.

Matthew 9:9 humanizes the individual by referring to him as "a man" rather than more formally referring to his ancestry [Mark 2:14] or referring to his despised employment as a tax collector [Luke 5:27].

I'm not seeing the point.

Matthew 9:10 refers to "the house" rather than "his house" [Mark 2:15, Luke 5:29], and "the house" is more natural coming from the house's owner.)

Bauckham doesn't think the switch to "the house" implies Matthew is the author:

Mark sets this scene in “his house,” which some scholars take to mean Jesus’ house, but could certainly appropriately refer to Levi’s house. In Matthew’s Gospel, the same passage follows the narrative of the call of Matthew, but the scene is set simply in “the house” (Matt 9:10). Thus this Evangelist has appropriated Mark’s story of the call of Levi, making it a story of Matthew’s call instead, but has not continued this appropriation by setting the following story in Matthew’s house. He has appropriated for Matthew only as much as Mark’s story of Levi as he needed.
...If this explanation of the name Matthew in Matt 9:9 is correct, it has one significant implication: that the author of Matthew’s Gospel intended to associate the Gospel with the apostle Matthew but was not himself the apostle Matthew. Matthew himself could have described his own call without having to take over the way Mark described Levi’s call.

Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, p. 108-109

If conservatives of Dr. Bauckham’s caliber are not convinced by the way fundamentalists spin the evidence to make Matthew into a gospel author, it’s a pretty good argument that the evidence for Matthean authorship is weak at best. If there was any legitimate way to spin the evidence to favor authorship by an apostle, somebody with Dr. Bauckham’s great learning and fundamentalist assumptions about the gospels as eyewitness testimony would surely have done it.  This doesn't prove Bauckham is correct, only that the skeptics who choose to adopt his point here are not unreasonable to do so.

Engwer continues:

If Matthew 9 is distinctive enough to be part of the explanation of the authorship attribution of the document, as seems to be the case, then so much the worse for Ehrman's claim that Matthew just repeated Mark.

Nah, Markan priority is pretty solid, especially if Eta Lineman and W. Farmer are the best the fundies can offer in rebuttal.

And so much the worse for Ehrman's claim that the author of the document didn’t make any effort to identify himself.

Just not the level of effort we'd expect of a person who was "amazingly transformed" by viewing the resurrected Jesus.

The author makes a lot of references to financial matters, including some unique to his gospel (e.g., 17:24-27, 18:23-35). In a passage about taxes that the Synoptics have in common (Matthew 22:19, Mark 12:15, Luke 20:24), Matthew uses more precise terminology than what's used by Mark and Luke. Those characteristics would make sense if the author were a tax collector.

Correction, if the author OF THE HEBREW ORIGINAL were a tax-collector.  I'm more dangerous to fundies than the average skeptic, because I avoid the extreme position that Matthew is completely detached from the gospel and allow that his influence likely appears in the canonical greek version, being based as it was on the earlier shorter Hebrew version.

And a tax collector's work would give him reason to know Greek.

It would also give him a reason to know why it is important to state his name and testify to what he himself observed, something the Matthew author never does.

So would various cultural factors involved with living in first-century Israel and various factors involved with being a prominent leader in a messianic movement.

Yes, apostle Matthew had something to do with the canonical Greek version.  But that hardly justifies automatically insisting that denial of Matthew's authorship is unreasonable.  There were two authors, and Matthew had the least influence on the Greek version.

As an apostle, Matthew would have had good reason to travel outside of Israel, so his presence outside of the nation wouldn't be a significant problem for Matthean authorship.

Except that according to Paul, the original Jewish apostles wished to disobey the Great Commission and limit their evangelism efforts to Jews alone:

 9 and recognizing the grace that had been given to me, James and Cephas and John, who were reputed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, so that we might go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. (Gal. 2:9 NAU)

Engwer continues:

Along with those who hold a traditional view of Matthean authorship, Ehrman acknowledges that the author probably was a Jew and that his gospel is of a highly Jewish character. Whether the author was outside of Israel at the time when he wrote doesn't have much significance in the context of authorship. The author was a Jew, and a Jewish apostle would have had reason to travel outside of Israel.

A position that can be reasonably disputed on the basis of Galatians 2:9.

Demolishing Triablogue: Early interest in gospel authorship doesn't make skeptics unreasonable

Jason Engwer of Triablogue tries to make Matthew's authorship of the gospel now bearing his name more reasonable than the skeptical position that says the author is anonymous.  I respond to each of Engwers points.

There would have been early interest in who wrote the gospel.
It's common today to claim that the gospels initially circulated anonymously, even for as long as several decades.

And the fact that even conservative Christian apologists like Mike Licona aren't willing to make a case for Matthew's authorship (see here), nor consider his resurrection testimony "bedrock" (see here) is sufficient, standing alone, to render reasonable the skeptic who says apostle Matthew's connection to the gospel now bearing his name is tenuous at best, which is more than sufficient to justify asserting the author to be anonymous.

Here's something I recently wrote on the subject in the comments section of an old thread:

In that sort of atmosphere of concern for named authority figures, distinguishing among sources, and trying to discern who wrote documents like the gospels, it's far more likely that the gospels were circulating with authorial attributions than that they were circulating anonymously.

Except that the authors were allegedly Jews who lived in a religious climate that approved of anonymously and falsely authored scriptures.  See the OT Pseudepigrapha and Intertestamental literature.  They were quite capable of blindly trusting something merely because it was religious.

There would have been a high degree of interest in the gospels' authorship well before the second half of the second century.

Perhaps among Christians.  I don't see any non-Christians of that period would have cared.

And thank you for helping increase the probability that Matthew authored the heretical "Gospel to the Hebrews".

And early belief in their traditional authorship attributions provides a far better explanation for the prominence of the gospels and how little dispute there was about their authorship.

And thousands of early Christians could seriously believe false rumors about the apostles. See Acts 21:18-24.

In closing, I suggest that people think about the context of early Christianity and whether it was a setting in which the gospels are likely to have circulated anonymously for nearly a century.

Most historians that wrote in the 1st century named themselves, including most NT authors, so the Matthew-author's choice to leave his name out was deliberate, and under your own belief that this gospel is inspired by God, it is therefore God's intent to refuse to name Matthew.  For all you know, trying to prove Matthew's authorship would be against the divine will.  But if you discovered any such thing, no problems, just become a Calvinist.

Christianity wasn't a philosophical system of ideas that were being promoted independently of authority figures.

Then apparently you never heard of apostle Paul.  For all his talk about Jesus, he infamously shows so little interest in the historical Jesus' teachings and requirements that it is reasonable to conclude Paul was a heretic.

Rather, it was a system founded on the authority of named individuals, starting with Jesus and going on to the apostles and other individuals who were named (Matthew 10:1-3, Mark 3:13-19, Ephesians 2:20, etc.).

Except that from what's written, the authority consisted of a live person.  The whole notion that god intended for any of this crap to be written down, is missing from the bible. So for all you know, Christianity died out when the original apostles did.  If the Roman Catholic church can live strong fro 2,000 years while being heretical, so can any cult, including one started by Jesus.

Luke's gospel opens with a reference to the significance of eyewitnesses (1:2), a concept that requires distinguishing among sources (differentiating between those who were eyewitnesses and those who weren't), which would include distinguishing among the authors of written sources.

Except that he doesn't tell the reader that he also copied from Mark, a non-eyewitness.  Luke doesn't declare that he relied on anything other than eyewitnesses.

The fourth gospel expresses an interest in authorship, its own authorship with the implication of concern about authorship more widely (John 21:24).

Which justifies drawing conclusions about the fact that none of the synoptic authors express any such concern.  You cannot have your cake and eat it too.  You cannot simply say John's interest in authorship shows his objectivity, while the synoptic authors who do less can be equally objective.

Ferguson raises doubts about whether Papias was discussing the authorship of the canonical gospels or the authorship of other documents instead, but there was a concern about authorship of gospels or similar documents either way.

That's hardly relevant; the point is that there are good arguments for saying Papias wasn't testifying to the Matthean authorship of what we today call canonical Greek Matthew.

And Papias cited an earlier source (the elder, probably the apostle John), who likewise was interested in authorship issues.

Hearsay within hearsay, which is probably why most conservative Christian scholars refrain from pushing Matthew's authorship and allow liberality.

The same can be said about the authorship concerns expressed in the dispute between Marcionism and Christian orthodoxy. I've cited other sources in the same timeframe, prior to the late second century, with similar authorship interests.

Your general comments about authorship interest from the earliest period do a wonderful job of increasing the probability that other early gospels that didn't make it into the canon (GoH, Thomas) were authentically authored by apostles.  When you start in with your predictable trifling about how the non-canonical gospels are "different" and "worse", we yawn and wonder how much longer we'll have to wait for you to recognize that apostolic gospel authorship doesn't really mean anything if skepticism of Jesus' resurrection can shown reasonable.

Demolishing Triablogue: The Weakness Of The Evidence For Matthew's Authorship

This is my reply to an article by Jason Engwer at Triablogue entitled

The Strength Of The Evidence For Matthew's Authorship

Friday, December 20, 2019

If the gospel attributed to Matthew was written by him, then that's a good line of evidence for the historicity of what he reports about Jesus' childhood.

Which is like saying an eyewitness report is good evidence for the historicity of some alleged event.     That's not "good", that's merely "slightly better than hearsay".

But since objections to the arguments for Jesus' resurrection are weighty and powerful, it hardly matters whether Jesus was the son of God.  Failure is failure, no matter how bright your clothes are.  And failure justifies others to draw certain conclusions.

Matthew's gospel and other early sources (e.g., Acts 1:13-14) put the apostle in contact with people who knew a lot about Jesus' background, such as Jesus himself, his mother, his brothers, and the people of Nazareth.

And Jesus' own immediate family members did not find his miracles the least bit compelling. Mark 3:21, 6:4 and John 7:5.  I've seen how you Triablogue types jump around like fleas on a dog trying to "account for" these verses while trifling that Jesus' miracles were still real.  Keep dreaming.

You think the author of Mark got his material from Peter, who was associated with Mary and other apostles, yet Mark attributes no miracles to Jesus' birth.  Whatever people were wondering about in Mark 6:3, that verse doesn't equal "Jesus was magically conceived."  But Jason Engwer specializes in squeezing blood out of turnips.  So Mark's disinterest in a birth of Jesus that you think was legitimately miraculous and which also testified in favor of Mark's own theme of Jesus as Son of God, is YOUR problem.

What you aren't going to do is prove the unreasonableness of the skeptic who cites Mark's silence on the virgin birth as a justification to accuse Matthew and Luke of lying.

But even conservative scholars don't say much about the evidence for Matthean authorship of the gospel,

Probably because they recognize a trap when they see it.  After all, being conservatives, they would more than likely make a big deal out of Matthew's authorship if they thought doing so could come across as serious argument.

and the few arguments they bring forward don't get developed much.

Probably because they recognize that the evidence in their favor is not very strong and easily falsifiable.  Papias this, logia that, and let's move on.

Here's a collection of articles on the evidence for Matthew's authorship.

I'll start a new blog piece to answer those.