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Regarding 1) a majority of modern Bible scholars agree that "Matthew" was written anonymously and for my purposes and therefore for this Group, all that is needed to support a conclusion is a majority of the evidence presented, same as the US Civil Court system. We can certainly discuss the reasons why a majority of modern Bible scholars have such an opinion.

Regarding 2) that the Apostles/Disciples properly determined authentic writings such assertion would have to reach up to touch "Such a statement is speculative at best and cannot be adequately proven". Remember that according to the Christian Bible, hypocrisy is the biggest sin (I have a feeling I'm going to be using that word a lot). There's no good evidence from the Church Father writings for your assertion. The farther you go back in time the more variation and uncertainty there is by the Fathers as to what was authentic and Scripture so it's obvious that Scripture was ultimately selected based on WHAT it said and not who wrote it. We can argue more about this too.

Regarding 3) a title of "Matthew" combined with the Church's traditional teaching that this was the disciple Matthew who is being referred to create the IMPLICATION that such Gospel is a first hand eyewitness report which as evidence is far superior to an anonymous non-eyewitness story.

Related to all this we have to try and define what is a Christian Bible? For my purposes a Christian Bible is any Bible commonly used by Christians. You would like to contract the definition of "Bible" to whatever was theoretically originally written even though this leaves us with an indefinite "Bible". Scripture and Bibles remind me of nicotine and cigarettes all of which can be hazardous to your health . Is nicotine in its original form dangerous? When left alone most people would never come in contact with it. Those few that would could manually smoke some but the relationship between the effort required to smoke and the harm done would probably not make nicotine overly dangerous. Cigarettes consisting primarily of nicotine on the other hand are marketed by huge coporations who through economies of scale can make them relatively inexpensive and through advertising can make them irresistable. They also come in a package. So it is with Scripture. When what we now call "Matthew" was originally written was it considered a "Bible" at that time. It probably had no front or back covers, no "Bible" title, stood alone and was not marketed as a Bible by any organization. As far as we know it may originally have been intended to be primarily a story and not a Bible. Early Christian writing indicates that initially Christians preferred the oral tradition to written traditions. Certainly the author of Luke didn't consider "Matthew" to be a Bible. The Church didn't start deciding what was "Scripture" until the middle of the second century and the Canon was not created until the fourth century.

Was whatever was originally written a Bible? I don't think so. The "Bible" was created later when an institution started marketing and packaging it, creating covers, titling it a "bible" and advertising that it was truth which was good for your health. Labeling a book "bible" carries implications. Most Christians in the world have no idea that the Gospel now known as "Matthew" was almost certainly not originally labeled as such. Why? Because their Bible has the title "Matthew". The same would be true of most Christians in the US and even most Christians in your hometown.

Your definitions are starting to smell. Better storm that Pit Bastille, Pepi LePeu, but use Right Guard instead of Old Guard.