Why David?

He's fighting over 3% or 5%, anything he says after that is tainted.

If you read the opening paragraphs, I make the point myself that arguing with cranks is a waste of time. It's my very first sentence, in fact. I then to go on to explain why I avoided writing any reply to Fitzgerald at all and why I only eventually did so with reluctance - it's because that kind of article is not what I tend to spend my time on.

But even if wading through the response-to-the-response-to-the-response of other people's arguments is tedious, as I fully recognise and acknowledge in my article, Fitzgerald's reply to me was being waved around as some kind of slam dunk victory for Mythicists, when in fact it was as riddled with incompetence and bad arguments as his original book. So I was given an opportunity to expose those arguments in detail as well as show that Carrier is completely unreliable as an unbiased source of competent analysis.

So I'll accept your criticisms, mainly because I pre-empted them in the article itself. The article still contains some detailed debunking of arguments that Mythicist fanboys like to parrot that I've not seen debunked elsewhere (eg the stuff about Origen and Whealey on the TF).

I read it, because I generally enjoy your blogs and because I sometimes find myself arguing whether or not Jesus existed.

I didn't really make a negative comment, I just implied that I thought your other writing was better. For instance, I thought your article on Bruno was top notch. It takes the reader to Italy, as a lost tourist who stumbles on a historic statue. It has a history lesson. It takes a few shots at Cosmos. It is well written. There is another article that I have no idea what it was about, but I remember you telling a story of when you were a graduate student and buying an old book that you wanted. It was well told and a slice of the human experience that I can relate to. That story sticks in my mind - the reason you told the story I don't remember.

I think as a writer you are at your best when you are intermixing stories, humor, and sarcastic shots in the article. The Fitzgerald article was long, rambling (sorry), and lacked the qualities I like in your writing. Perhaps part of the reason for my dislike is that I don't have the context. I don't read Fitzgerald. I don't care what he thinks about Jesus, O'Neill's blog, or anything else. I think 10s of thousands of words spent arguing with cranks is a waste of time to write and read. I understand why you would want to write it. It may be useful for people who take Fitzgerald seriously. I don't remember it being a particularly good primer on the historical Jesus - another one of your articles is.

Ah, I would disagree slightly. There's a sizable number of scholars who believe Mark and Luke were written by Mark and Luke. Almost nobody thinks Matthew wrote Matthew; John has become a little more contentious in recent years. Also, there are some good scholars doing work on the Griesbach Hypothesis (Matthew---> Luke---> Mark as a digest of both Matthew and Luke). They haven't been found particularly persuasive, but not due to lack of trying.

Oh? How and why?

It bears pointing out the larger issue here. The level of literacy in Roman Palestine goes to the background information on whether any disciples of Jesus wrote the Gospels.

Yes, but only barely. If I had good reason to accept the traditional attributions, then I would infer that either (a) the authors happened to be among the 15 (or whatever) percent who were literate or else (b) they hired scribes to do their writing.

There really can be no justification for "adapting" copyrighted material,

Copyright is beside the point. Even if a document is in the public domain, if you put an excerpt within quotation marks, then that had better be exactly what was in the original.