Diogenes the Cynic

Actually, very few, if any, educated "skeptics" would say that everything in the Gospels must be fiction because they contain claims for miracles. It's true that the miracle claims themselves are obviously impossible and cannot be historical but it does not necessarily follow that everything else in the gospels must logically be ahistorical. The miracle stories make the authors suspect as historians but it is other elements besides claims for miracles which force many to conclude that the Gospels are mostly, if not entirely, fictional narratives.

It is true that there is no extra-Biblical support for Biblical miracles, though (or any other miracle, for that matter).
Let me say first that you're assuming every "skeptic" is a mythicist. That is assuredly not the case. Most NT scholars still believe Jesus existed historically. They just don't believe any of the supernatural claims associated with him.

As to your question, the Gospel of Mark was written before the Gospel of Matthew. Matthew used Mark as a template but also (most scholars believe) added some material from another source called Q (a source he shared with Luke) and invented some material of his own- namely his nativity and appearance narratives.

As to the intention of Mark. we don't know exactly but it is not likely nor is it widely believed that Mark "made Jesus up." What is likely is that Mark was attempting to create a history for a figure which was already an object of worship. There are still unresolved questions as to whether Jesus was perceived as a real, historical person before Mark or whether Mark intended his Gospel to be read as factual history. The mainstream consensus would fall along the lines of an assumption that Jesus was a real person but a person for whom little or no biographical information was known by Mark's audience. Mark combined some sayings traditions with some narratives constructed from his own creative reading of the HB. He may have even thought he was telling the truth.
The Gospels weren't written until (at a minimum) 40-70 years after the alleged crucifixion and they took several more decades to circulate and become well known. They were written outside Palestine for an audience which was in no position to be able to refute anything.. The first Gospel was written by Mark, not Matthew and it didn't "convince everybody" that Jesus was real. For one thing, it was written for people who were already Christians, for another thing, most people who heard about it (and it was a rather obscure movement in the 1st century) thought it was bullshit. It failed especially among Jews who knew only too well how much Henrew scripture and Jewish Messianism was being distorted and lied about by Christian evangelists.

In short, nobody much knew or cared about the Gospels until generations after the supposed time of Jesus. How was anyone supposed to refute it? With what evidence and why would they even care? Even if someone did dispute it, what makes you think they would write a book about it? Even if they wrote a book about it, what makes you think any manuscripts would necessarily survive?
Mark was the first Gospel, not Matthew.

Why would anyone care to debunk the mythic history of an obscure cult generations after the alleged facts? How would it be possible anyway? How do you prove somebody didn't exist or didn't come back from the dead?
Nobody thinks thinks that Matthew or any of the other authors of the gospels made Jesus up. That's a bogus assertion on your part. Scholarly consensus is that Mark (not Matthew), attempted to write a history for a figure who (historical or not) was already an object of worship.
1. Why would the Romans CARE about debunking the historical claims made in the Gospels?
2. How could they possibly have produced the remains of a criminal who had been crucified a century ago (by the time the Romans would have even had any awareness of these claims) in a destroyed city and either left to rot on the cross or dumped in an unmarked mass grave somewhere? How were they supposed to know where the bones of Jesus were buried or even IF they were buried?

Even if they were to produce a skeleton, how was that supposed to have been convincing? How could they have proven it was Jesus? And ionce again, why would they care in the first place?

Diogenes the Cynic

Jews didn't think the Messiah was God. They didn't build churches to humans.

judge

You don't know whether this is true or not. You do not know when matthew's gospel was written.
You have jumped to the unsupported conclusion that because we have no evidence that it was written very early it cannot have been written very early.
This is just dogma.

What we can say is we do not know how early Matthew was written, apart from that is is just speculation, from a naturalistic perspective anyway.

Major Billy

Julian

In addition to the replies you have already received showing how you are mistaken in many, many ways, I would like to add that there were writings against Christianity, but the christians made sure to burn all those works. Celsus and Porphyry spring to mind here. These works were written once christianity became a blip on the radar.

Julian

Chris Weimer

Er, not quite there judge. I think you're missing two hundred years worth of scholarship there. There's plenty of evidence that Matthew was written after Paul, in that case not being the fabricater of the Jesus story. Moreover, there's even more evidence that Matthew copied Mark, thus definitely not being the fabricater of the Jesus story.

Diogenes the Cynic

We know that Matthew copied Mark and we also know that Mark could not have been written before 70 CE. That's not speculative, that's hard evidence. Is it your position that Matthew was written before the (authentic) Pauline corpus?

Even if that's your position, Matthew was still definitely written after Mark. Even if you don't accept THAT, the point still stands that Half-Life's assertion that "skeptics think Matthew made Jesus up" is still completely false. No matter what you think of mainstream NT scholarship, you know that nobody thinks that Matthew "made up" Jesus.

robto

My question for Half-Life:

If you believe in Jesus because of the miracles in the Bible, do you also believe in Asclepius because of the miraculous cures recorded at his temple? There are many more of the latter than the former....

pharoah

Err...why do you think that? There are a bunch of Xians out there ready to believe any report of an alleged miracle. Try making that claim on one of the Xian forums and I guarantee that you'll find many believers.

Remember also that Matthew claimed that ALL of the saints that had ever lived also rose from the dead. Now do you believe that Half-Life? Should we look for the empty tombs of Noah, David and Moses?

FatherMithras

Half life, you really really really need to read up on the claims people are actually making against Christianity's validity. You accuse us atheists of hilarious stuff and surprisingly seem to know incredibly little about the time in which Jesus lived. Here's one fun fact! If you got crucified back then, you didn't get buried! You got EATEN BY WILD DOGS. There would have been no tomb for Jesus, and no dead body because it would have been puppy chow.