Baseball and the Naming of the Gospels

In #wordpress_migration

So I was listening to the Reasonable Doubts podcast, and in either the episode on the nativity or the one on the reasonableness of Christianity (both debates), the theist in the debate said something to the effect that, had the Gospels been forged (i.e. weren't written by the claimed disciple Matthew, translator Mark, historian Luke, and disciple John) then the forgers would have chosen more notable author names, such as Peter or James, to enhance the reputation of the text.  He then made an analogy with baseball card forgeries, and said that if you were to make a forgery of baseball cards you'd choose someone like Babe Ruth, and not some lesser player.

I love analogies with the rebuttal built in!  If you were forging baseball cards, you most certainly wouldn't do one of Babe Ruth, because the BS meter would peg on anyone who you showed it to.  You would want to choose one that was valuable but not too valuable.  Otherwise, it might be rejected outright.

It would follow that there is some advantage to choosing a name that has some prestige (e.g. Matthew) but not too much (e.g. Peter).

This is not to mention that the names on the documents were added many decades after they were written, the order of the Gospels was determined with the mistaken idea that Matthew was primary, and that the so-called eye-witness (Matthew) copies verbatim the text of a non eye-witness (Mark).