@Lance:

Each of the gospels are written for a specific audience.

Each of the two other synoptic gospels were based largely on Mark. Both Matthew and Luke were writing THE gospel for their audiences. They were not meant to be anthologised, compared or tested against reality.
The errors of jewish tradition and Law were largely corrected in Matthews gospel;, but the same errors were continued in Mark and Luke.
John was a much later addition and written in a greek narrative fiction style.

Paul does not mention the birth narrative.

Both Matthew and Luke had the birth narratives added, I suggest you research the Adoptionists of the early 1st century. Their gospels are noted in the early second century as not including the birth Narrative by the early church fathers.

Marcion used the gospels of Luke without the birth Narrative as well....as did other early sects

As far s leaving pieces out- the earliest and most accurate manuscripts do include them, not much else to add

You really do not know what you are talking about do you? The earliest fragment of Mark you have is dated to 160 CE, the earliest of John to 125CE. You have no certain knowledge of the contents of your gospels before the mid Third century.

We KNOW that early versions of both Matthew and Luke without the birth narrative existed because their enemies (the Roman Church fathers) tell us so....even though the actual texts have not survived. Here is a hint look up Ebionites, Marcionites and the Syriac gospels. They all predate the texts you use.

2 cents

@ Lance

For this atheist, the New Testament is the mythology of Christianity.IE Unreliable as history.

The date of December 25 was stolen from the Roman Deus Sol Invicta (the sun god)

The historicity of Jesus has not been established conclusively, Perhaps start with the fact that there are no contemporary accounts about Jesus. None.

MY position: ( I don't speak for others) It's probable that in First century Judea ., there was an itinerant rabbi called something like Yesua bar Yusuf,. That he founded a small Jewish sect . That he upset the wrong people and was crucified. A jew being crucified by the Romans in first first century Judea was not a noteworthy occurrence .(the Romans crucified thousands of Jews during their occupation)

That the religion which was called Christianity (from the late fourth century,) contains no new ideas and has little if anything to do with a poor little rabbi who was crucified .

Had Christianity not become state religion under Theodosius, it would have faded into a well deserved oblivion, Probably to be replaced by Mithraism , a much older religion with some familiar ideas ..

You said you don't to argue..Fine, I will say nothing further on this topic to you

This ex-christian atheist still thinks a Jesus, or a Yeshua, probably was born in Palestine 2000 years ago, but this is only because Joseph Campbell maintains that there is a kernel of truth at the heart of every great myth.
As for the tinsel that passes as an historical account of the divine birth of Jesus in the gospels, its all paganlike, superstitious nonsense.

The gospels were written by jews but certainly not apostles. The literary structure for each gospel, including John and Acts, is based on the annual liturgical worship of the synagogue, not history or historical events. The gospels aren't the eyewitness accounts of apostles. They are carefully constructed programs of worship based on the weekly readings of the Pentateuch, utilising the unsubstantiated legends of that notable ascetic Jewish rabbi who was deliberately linked to earlier prophets and prophecies in the first five books of the Torah to establish his authority as the representative and later as the one and only son, of Yahweh, God of the Children of Israel, formerly known as Jacob. The details of events from birth to death of Yeshua contravene known recorded historical and social circumstances at the time. The gospels are not historically accurate at all. Even theist bible academics acknowledge this.

The gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke, were consistently included in the earliest collections of accepted scripture because of their similarities. Even Marcion, the famous excommunicated heretic, included them in his collection. They were beleived to be divinely inspired because of their synoptic character. What had been forgotten was that those similarities had come from following the Hebrew liturgical format when they were written. And so, Jewish Luke copied from Jewish Matthew who copied from Jewish Mark and the similarities in the story they each told was held by much later Christians to be proof positive of their undeniable veracity and not because they were cribbed from each other. I have read some theists insisting that none of the gospel authors ever even knew each other or were even aware of their writings, which is a greater fiction than the bible itself, but as Eusebius insisted, lying for god is a virtue.

This familiarity between the gospels authors was keenly forgotten by the new christians in their bid to declare the legitimacy of their new religion as they busily submerged themselves in deep and profound, if misguided, Platonic philosophical interpretations of the bible and new testament, egotistically stringing out as many tenuous arguments and profundities as their god would allow them.

And after getting the official nod from Constantine and having vanquished the Jew, the atheist and the pagan, they started on each other, most memorably warring against and murdering fellow christians, who disputed hair-splitting aspects about the nature of God's essence and the messy details of his relationship with Yeshua, not to mention the dubious qualities of the Holy Ghost. There were also bloody exchanges as to who could forgive whom of sins against the laws of God as well, but that was a long time ago. Sixteen hundred years of terrorism, war, pogroms, witch hunts and innocent blood, mostly based on unsettled issues concerning the Trinity. Jesus wept alright.

It can't be known if Christianity today has anything to do with the simple teachings of a rabbi from Nazareth or where ever. It has more to do with the passionate and violent disputations of ordinary arrogant men who claimed through elegant word soups to understand the complexities of an omnipotent deity and over other issues of which they could have had no true understanding.

The Torah is bad enough, but the Holy Bible and the New Testament are abominations.

I am only one atheist and I don't expect any other atheist to agree with this little rant.