It was unremarkable at the time. No contemporary history mentions it at all. Philo, who said a few things about Pilate manages not to be impressed with the graves spilling forth their dead and those dead wandering around chatting people up. That seems like a noteworthy event that might inspire comment by someone other than Matthew (the author of which was not likely present at the events he describes). Josephus mentions it, but doesn't mention the resurrection, or the other fantastical events of the day (all those dead people coming out of the graves for instance). But neither was he a witness to any of the events, he was born several years after and didn't write these things down until 90-100.

I have been an atheist most of my life, but not all of it. I was a Protestant Christian for roughly a dozen of my younger years, about half of them as a fundamentalist
evangelical and the remainder as a liberal modernist. More recently, since the
early days of the World Wide Web, I have spent much time debating Christians,
mostly evangelicals, about their beliefs.

Herewith my comments on Aslan's article.

1. Jesus was born in Bethlehem.

As an atheist, I have no dog in any fight over where Jesus was born. His birthplace has no bearing on whether he could have been the son of God. But the gospels
constitute our only source of biographical information about him, and two of them say he was born in Bethlehem. The birth narratives in both Matthew and Luke, as written, do contain grounds for reasonable doubt in the mind of anyone not committed to inerrancy, but that doesn't make "born in Bethlehem" a myth in the usual sense. The belief that Jesus was born in Bethlehem could be a mistake -- I believe it is -- but being a mistake doesn't make it a myth.

2. Jesus was an only child.

I think Aslan is getting silly here. Yes, lots of people believe this, but nearly all of them are Roman Catholics. Most Protestants believe he had at least one brother,
named James, who became the leader of the church in Jerusalem after Jesus died.
So do most non-Christians, for that matter, at least in those parts of world where Christianity is the dominant religion. Check out any debate on Jesus' historicity, and you'll see even atheists arguing: But Paul said James was his brother, so he had to exist!

3. Jesus had 12 disciples.

Aslan's argument here is nothing but a semantic quibble, and a petty one at that. I've never met anyone who thinks that in singling out those twelve for special mention, the gospel authors meant to suggest that Jesus had no other disciples.

4. Jesus had a trial before Pontius Pilate.

In a general way, I agree with Jon on this one. There is no way that this belief is without good evidence. It could well have been true that Pilate routinely killed Jews
without benefit of trial, but it does not follow that he always did. I do regard the gospel accounts of the trial as implausible, but I cannot infer from that, that there was no trial.

5. Jesus was buried in a tomb.

Aslan calls this "an extremely unusual, perhaps unprecedented, act of benevolence on the part of the Romans." It would have been unusual, yes, but we know from Josephus that it was not entirely unprecedented. I do regard the tomb burial as
improbable, but not for lack of evidence. I just think the evidence is insufficient. And that makes this belief, like the birth in Bethlehem, a mistake and not a myth.

I agree, and find these "puzzles" fascinating. The census Luke describes in chapter 2:1-2 is a particularly good example.

It's fun to engage in harmonization. For example, you can try harmonizing the birth narrative of Jesus in Luke with the birth narrative of Jesus in Matthew. You end up with quite a story.

The post-conversion account of Paul in Galatians and Luke's account in Acts can be harmonized. This link shows one way these accounts can fit together:

https://www.apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=6&article=782

Just speaking from memory here about the conflict between Paul and Peter. It was not a difference in opinion about whether Jewish Christians _should_ share meals with Gentile Christians. Rather, the conflict was that Peter didn't practice what he preached, and Paul called him out on this.

The case against Pauline authorship of Colossians is based on some perceived differences in style and theology. I'm personally not too impressed by scholars who build a big case based solely on differences in style or ideas. A person's writing style can change somewhat over a person's lifetime or even based on a person's mood that day, and a person's ideas develop over time in response to context and circumstances. This is certainly true of a man like Paul who traveled and was influenced, certainly in language and ideas, by many cultures with different dialects, different ideas, and different expressions of speech.

The case for Pauline authorship of Colossians is the notable presence of Pauline themes (themes also in Ephesians), the similarity to circumstances described in the letter to Philemon, and the positive evidence that this letter was acknowledged as genuine by multiple people who knew people who knew Paul - such as Irenaeus (who was a disciple of Polycarp, who was a disciple of John).

Given that the earliest known claims that the author of the Gospel was "Luke" the traveling companion of Paul date from a century after the gospel was believed to have been written, there is ample reason to question the identity of "Luke".

Moreover, the identification of the author of the gospel as a traveling companion of Paul by people such as Irenaeus -- and yourself -- was made precisely on the basis of what Paul supposedly wrote in Colossians. However, it is believed by many modern scholars of the New Testament that Colossians was a forgery and was not written by Paul at all.

But even if Paul did write Colossians, there is no assertion in that letter that "Luke the beloved physician" was also a gospel writer. As I have noted elsewhere, differences between what was written in Luke-Acts and what Paul himself wrote in letters that are universally acknowledged to be genuine certainly call into question whether the author of Luke-Acts was either a traveling companion or disciple of Paul.

If Luke was indeed a disciple of Paul, then his theology was certainly Pauline, and Pauline/Petrine/Johannine Christianity is the mainline ("catholic") form of Christianity which developed into Christian trinitarian orthodoxy.

If "Luke" was a disciple of Paul, then he was a disciple of Paul. However, if he wasn't a disciple of Paul, then he wasn't a disciple of Paul.

The reason why one might reasonably question whether he was a disciple of Paul is that, in Acts, Luke takes certain positions that are different from the ones that Paul takes in the genuine Pauline letters, among them the assertion that there was no difference of opinion between Paul and Peter about things like whether one should share meals with Gentiles (who did not follow kosher practice). Luke also makes certain claims about what Paul did that, again, are different from what Paul says in his own letters. For example, In Galatians, Paul says that after his conversion, he went to Arabia, then to Damascus, and only a few years later, to Jerusalem -- where, Paul states emphatically, he met only with Peter and James. But according to "Luke," Paul went to Jerusalem right away after his conversion, and met with other apostles in addition to Peter and James.