Richard Carrier

[Undeceived]

The Jews and Romans portrayed in the Gospel of Matthew (as distinct from the real historical people of that time) react to a story ("let's ignore this and hush it up") rather than responding realistically to terrifying supernatural events

Do you think the chief priests believed the guards about the angel? Would you have?

the characters all somehow just know that Jesus' mission does not involve marching on Jerusalem with his undead army and magical powers to punish them for torturing and killing him

That sort of reaction is not in Jesus' character. Why would the Jews expect vengeance from a man who healed people, told Peter to put away his sword, and walked willingly into his execution?

Provide an example in which early AD fiction-writers produced a work with depth and meaning comparable to the Gospels, which they did not intend to be taken as fact. One example.

The Aeneid http://classics.mit.edu/Virgil/aeneid.html By Virgil Written 19 B.C.E close enough to AD to count? You can google it. After centuries of Romulus and Remus all the Romans became descendants of a Trojan.

http://academic.reed.edu/humanities/110tech/aeneid.html

Based upon what the Roman historians had to say about the earliest beginnings of Rome, it seems likely that a Roman would have seen the Aeneid as a fictionalized account of events which in their broad outline were historically accurate.

http://www.usu.edu/markdamen/1320AncLit/...11verg.htm

When Amulius discovered them, he ordered that the babies be put in a basket and drowned in the Tiber River but instead they floated to safety and, when they washed up on the banks, their cries of hunger attracted a she-wolf. Normally, such a beast would have killed and eaten the children, but the Romans believed the she-wolf to be an animal sacred to Mars and, sensing that these were his divine offspring, it nursed the children instead of devouring them. Thus, the infants were fed literally on the milk of war, a symbol of the martial culture which Rome would later embrace.

Are mere symbols generally included in history? They are one indicator that the Romans would have viewed The Aeneid as fiction. The link above also points out other myths that the Romans could have fact-checked. While we possess few remaining Roman histories, Romans at the turn of the millennium maintained whole libraries of their past. It seems unlikely that any educated person would have believed the story of The Aeneid to be fact. Compare this to 1st century Israel, in which all Jewish were educated, especially in the Torah and prophetic scrolls. The Gospels fulfill prophecies which any Jew could confirm. Most notably, they foretold the coming of a Messiah. Jesus fits the Messianic prophecies exactly. It's hard to imagine a Jew writing a fictional character of such significance and not mean for people to respond. That's like yelling "Fire!" in a theater. Have you read Jewish viewpoints on Christianity? They largely consider the narrative of Jesus a diabolical plot, not some innocent tale that was misinterpreted.