I want to expand on some things I said in my last post. When somebody like Bart Ehrman refers to the unlikelihood that the average first-century Jew without much of an education, an ancient fisherman like John, etc. would compose a document like the gospel of Matthew or the gospel of John, there are other factors involved that are being neglected.
Those other factors can be illustrated with some modern examples. You have to get a job at some point, even though you never worked previously. You have to do things you hadn't done before, develop skills you previously didn't have. And promotions in your career involve taking on new responsibilities. Or you become a parent, which results in your maturing to some extent, taking life more seriously, being more careful in certain contexts, and so on. Or you begin taking care of an elderly parent. I occasionally hear of pastors who have some religious education, but don't have a doctorate, and they work to get a doctorate while serving as a pastor. Or a businessman will train in his spare time to become a missionary. These kinds of scenarios are common.
It's also commonplace to get other people to do work for you. Hire a plumber. Pay a lawyer to draft and file some legal documents for you. Get a friend who's a mechanic to fix your car.
It's not just that you have to mature, develop, make progress, and so forth to advance your own interests or to care for a child or elderly parent, for example. There's also the influence of your peers more broadly, including what we often refer to as peer pressure. Your relatives, friends, neighbors, and people who work with you and whose jobs depend on you in some way, for instance, expect certain things from you and will influence you to do particular things accordingly. Other people in the department of the company you work for are depending on you to some extent for the department to do well, for their handling of their own job within the department, etc. Not only do you want to take care of the new child you've had, but your wife and other relatives are expecting you to do certain things, and there's pressure on you to act toward that end. And so on.
Think about becoming an apostle. Would somebody like Matthew or John remain as he was when he met Jesus, without ever changing? Consider all of the passages in the gospels about taking up your cross, leaving your family and possessions to follow Jesus, how the disciples would travel from one town to another, etc. Picking up on the last subject I just mentioned, Paul refers to the traveling he and the other apostles did (1 Corinthians 9:5). That alone would involve a significant change in your life. More broadly, "there is the daily pressure on me of concern for all the churches" (2 Corinthians 11:28). "God has exhibited us apostles last of all, as men condemned to death; because we have become a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men. We are fools for Christ's sake, but you are prudent in Christ; we are weak, but you are strong; you are distinguished, but we are without honor. To this present hour we are both hungry and thirsty, and are poorly clothed, and are roughly treated, and are homeless; and we toil, working with our own hands; when we are reviled, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure; when we are slandered, we try to conciliate; we have become as the scum of the world, the dregs of all things, even until now." (1 Corinthians 4:9-13)
You have to think about becoming an apostle from the perspective of the men who were apostles, not from the perspective of the average modern American or a critic of Christianity like Bart Ehrman. As an apostle, you wouldn't have the highly secular and trivial mindset of a modern American, and you wouldn't be an atheist or agnostic. You thought the Messiah had appointed you to the highest office in the church, as part of the foundation of the church for future generations (Matthew 19:28, Ephesians 2:20, Revelation 21:14). You would have a large degree of motivation to make changes in your life. One of the areas in which you'd have to change is in your handling of communication issues. You would be communicating with people as you did the traveling, the overseeing of individuals and churches, and other activities that Jesus referred to in the gospels, that Acts refers to, that Paul refers to, etc. You'd have a high level of interest in improving your own literary skills, getting other people with better skills to help you, or both. And other people around you would have a lot of motivation to assist you, including scribes and others who already had some relevant education, training, work experience, and so forth.
The traditional Christian claim isn't that thousands of first-century Christians became an equivalent of Josephus or Cicero. Or that all of the Twelve did so. Rather, the claim is that at least two apostles, Matthew and John, and at least two non-apostles, Mark and Luke, made enough of an effort to communicate well so as to produce or have others help them produce documents like the gospels we have in the New Testament.
Notice that two of the Biblical passages I cited earlier about the apostles' high status within the church are attributed to the two apostles in question (Matthew 19:28, Revelation 21:14). If you thought you had that sort of role in life, a role somebody you thought of as the Messiah appointed you to, you would have a large amount of motivation to communicate well and to do more than you'd do if you were still the average tax collector or fisherman without further qualification. There are further qualifications, and they're highly significant ones. That has to be taken into account.
Part of the problem here is that people like Ehrman frame the discussion in terms of whether somebody had the education, opportunities, and such of those who were elite within the mainstream of the ancient world. But you wouldn't have to be elite by the standards of the mainstream of a culture in order to be elite by some other set of standards. The apostles were elites within the church, despite having a low status by the standards of the surrounding world. To judge their likely abilities and resources by the latter, while ignoring or underestimating the former, is lopsided and simplistic.
Think about how much Paul matured from being a persecutor of the church to writing letters like Galatians and Romans less than thirty years later. Whatever formal education Paul had before becoming a Christian, there would have been no formal training to teach him all that he learned about Christian theology, a Christian interpretation of the Old Testament, the illustrations he used to argue for Christian conclusions, etc., which we see scattered throughout his letters. Matthew and John could have, and surely did, mature over time as well. John especially had the opportunity to do so, given how unusually long he lived and how much he could anticipate his patriarchal role as one of the last apostles and eventually the last one, something he had to live out for however many years.
The help Paul received from coauthors of his letters, scribes, messengers, and such (Timothy, Titus, Silvanus, Chloe, etc.) was motivated by his significant role in Christianity, such as his apostleship. The same occurred with the other apostles. Different apostles would have wanted and received different types of assistance, but the general principles here are applicable to the apostles in general, not just Paul.
An argument like Ehrman's ought to be used against him. Given how high a role in life the apostles thought they had and how highly other Christians regarded them, how likely is it that none of the apostles other than Paul (the Twelve, James, Jude, etc.) acquired the relevant skills or sought or received the relevant help from people who already had the skills needed? And why would a scenario in which none of them did so produce a historical record in which there was such a widespread perception (including among some heretics, Jews, and pagans) that some of those apostles did produce the sort of documents under consideration? See here for a discussion of some of the evidence for John's long lifespan and his influence on Christianity in the late first and second centuries. There was a widespread consensus among the earliest sources, including individuals and churches who were relationally and geographically close to John, that he could and did produce documents.
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