The Jesus Freaks Will Hate This

[Brakeman]

I don't think anyone here gives two shits about who the authors actually were.

That's the point of my question. So why would me discovering that the authors of the gospels are anonymous make me stop believing in Christ?

If you've ever been on the internet, you know that anonymity brings out the worst in mankind. With the bible authors, their anonymity signals a grave problem for the historicity of the events. In the same way a living resident of Tokyo could counter as rubbish any story that Godzilla had destroyed the town in the 60's, the anonymity and the unknown timing take away the natural public corrections that would have occurred had the story been contemporary and local. If jesus had been actually as widely recognized in the middle east as portrayed, art in the form of statues, carvings, and pottery would have been filled with his images. What other story would an artist in Nazareth, Jerusalem, and other bible locations tell as opposed to the jesus they had seen? What other story would the literate of these cities write? But of course nothing contemporary has ever been found, only a fanciful anonymous story, dated conveniently past the lifetimes of any that could have directly countered it.

You state the fallback excuse that the "holy ghost" told the writers the exact details, but then you would have to explain why the holy ghost chose these men in an extra biblical manner. The bible is supposed to be the entire word of god and in it's completeness, it would have referred to how god intended to relay his message by ghostly visits. Why tell us why details of who begat who are important, yet mentioning god's intended pathway of authorship and message conveyance isn't important enough to mention?

If the "holy ghost" can tell specific words and sentences to a few anonymous middle eastern Greeks, why can't he tell you the narrative directly? What need does the ghost have of a book? Why can't you have a real conversation with him right now? Why can you ask him the authors' names in a prayer right now and then give us the answer???