There is no more information.
So you’ve read every scholarly book and scholarly article on the authorship of the Gospels published over the last 20 years?
If not, your statement is pure bluff.
Just for background, I think the description apatheist fits me better than any other epithet. I live in France and religion impinges on my daily life not in the slightest. I do in odd moments wonder about life, the universe and everything but lurking and occasionally commenting here is like entering an alternate reality. I’m not sure people living in the US realize how odd they seem from the outside.
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Call my bluff! 
Au contraire. What detectives do is eliminate suspects one at a time. So, we know who the gospel writers weren’t. They weren’t disciples of Jesus. They weren’t anyone who claims to have met Jesus. They weren’t people who lived in or knew anything about Palestine. They weren’t people who were familiar with Jewish law or customs. They didn’t write anything in Hebrew or Aramaic. They were not historians. They did not write anything in the First Century. Two of them were not writing anything original but copied and embellished the works of another. By process of elimination, we have suspects. Greek speaking Christian evangelists created Jesus. See how easy that was when you use some historical method and a little detective work? Not that hard to figure out.
What Greek speaking Christian evangelists? Name one. Name it and claim it.
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Marcion of Sinope for one.
No, I’m not going to buy or borrow books to look up information for you. If you are really “curious” – as you say you are – you will do the looking up for yourself.
I certainly agree that this place is an “alternate reality”, though perhaps not for the same reasons as yours.
Should any nation care about how it seems from the outside? If it believes in itself, why should the opinion of others matter?
How do you know he was not fictitious?
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I don’t. The Catholic Church and Eusebius did such a thorough but not quite complete job in wiping the pagan origins of Christianity from history it’s difficult to reconstruct what or who really existed. However, someone collected (or forged) the oldest New Testament texts and translated most of them from Greek to Latin. A case has been made that Marcion could be the real Apostle Paul. But hey, I’m just the detective here, not the prosecutor, judge or jury.
As I keep saying, I’m curious as to the who, when, why of the origin of the gospels attributed to Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John*. I don’t expect you to tell me anything useful but you could surprise me by pointing me to something factual.
- Who were these people?
The four tetramorphs or living creatures of the vision of Ezekiel are a bull, lion, eagle, and man. The four tetramorphs play a central role in the vision of Ezekiel and they also correspond to the four evangelists of the New Testament. The animals associated with the Christian tetramorph originate in the Babylonian symbols of the four fixed signs of the zodiac: the ox representing Taurus; the lion representing Leo; the eagle representing Scorpio; the man or angel representing Aquarius.
Matthew is depicted writing the text of the Gospel According to Matthew, while the winged Man looks on. From the Geneva Bible of 1599.
How interesting that Eddie, who claims to be an expert in religious studies, won’t make a recommendation to you, but did recommend an utterly dishonest and incomplete account of OoL research, despite being so clueless that he denied that ribozymes are RNA:
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Your comment here is off-topic, but there is a new topic right up your alley as a Christian scientist, started up not by me but by someone else. I’m sure you’d like to help this person to “discover the true Christian faith”:
Your guidance regarding the contents of the true Christian faith should help this person out of his or her confusions. Just spell out where he or she is wrong and what the Christian faith is actually about.
No, it isn’t. My comment was on your reticence to provide basic information from your alleged field of expertise that was politely requested.
In several of my posts I already provided some relevant information on NT books’ dating and authorship. I then added that to get the latest thoughts of the best Biblical scholars on the matter, one should consult recent works of scholarship, and I gave some general suggestions regarding the best publishers and regarding the use of Google and Amazon to find such works. Those who want a quick answer without exerting the slightest bit of labor may not be happy with that. That’s their problem, not mine.
In any case, the “on-topic” portion of your post was not the one which motivated it, as the off-topic parts of it show.
I’ll keep an eye out to see how a senior Christian scientist mentors a young Christian on the other thread. This will be Opportunity #563 (from 2009 to the present) for you to state the (so far concealed) contents of your Christian belief in a public forum where the conversations are dominated by atheists. A Christian should relish such an opportunity to serve the Lord in such a hostile environment.
Ah, Marcion. Are you aware that creationism is a possible recreation of Marcionites?
Mentioned by Justin, though you may claim he’s also fictitious. Among other references, his “First Apology” (which you may claim was written by some-one else decades or centuries later) includes this:
For the apostles, in the memoirs composed by them, which are called Gospels, have thus delivered unto us what was enjoined upon them
So some gospels were around in Justin’s time, and must have been written before then, and in absence of other likely candidates, he’s probably referring to Mark and Luke and/or Matthew before they were so named. Hence it’s not a serious consideration that Mark at least was written after 150.
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There were over 200 gospels so there’s no absence of other candidates. If Justin did exist then he’s the likely candidate for taking the word “harah” – in Hebrew a past or perfect tense and switching it into a future tense to arrive at: “Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel.” This switcheroo probably happened because he would have been competing with the priests of Artemis, the virgin goddess. If that’s the case then his life predates the gospels in the Bible. Also, I don’t think Justin mentioned Paul or his epistles. So, there’s that.
In any case there’s very good reason to believe that what Justin supposedly wrote is a pious fraud like everything else coming from the Christian Church. The First Apology was written to a Roman Emperor. Yet somehow this letter miraculously found its way back to the Church. It was not in the possession of a secular Roman historian when it was first produced. Same as all the letters written by the Church Fathers. This is true about all the stories of Christian martyrdom as well. The Church in Rome had the only copies.
Early Christians were fed to lions in the Colosseum. It’s one of the earliest, most terrifying examples of Christian persecution and made. Actually, no. It never happened. Not a single legitimate record exists of the Romans executing any Christians in the Colosseum. It would have been impossible, because at the time Nero was supposedly persecuting Christians, the Colosseum hadn’t been built yet. By the time it was complete, Rome had gotten used to the idea of Christianity. All the stories of Christian martyrdom are unknown to secular history.
We supposedly have secular witnesses to the life of Jesus like Josephus and Tacitus. But again, the Church produced the only known copies of the works of these historians that mention Jesus or Christians. Paul supposedly wrote letters to different First Century churches. Yet all these “letters” somehow found their way “back” to Rome - because they never left Rome in the first place. None were found tucked away in some church office, library, someone’s house or in the possession of a secular historian. What a coincidence!
Assertion without evidence. Also probably untrue, especially when considering gospels that existed prior to Justin’s Apology.
Assertion without evidence. Also it’s ridiculous - there are many other candidates, including the anonymous author of ‘Matthew’ and the authors Matthew used as sources, and no reason whatsoever to think Justin was responsible.
Assertion with evidence. You’re making this up.
What’s miraculous about keeping a copy of what was sent?
Assertion without evidence.