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Are you sure about that. Here's Lapides himself on the subject.
http://www.growthtrac.com/artman/pub...essiah-631.php
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These are the only parts from that article that deals with my objection:
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But that objection didn't fly any further than the previous one. "In God's wisdom, he created checks and balances both inside and outside the Christian community," Lapides explained. "When the Gospels were being circulated, there were people living who had been around when all these things happened. Someone would have said to Matthew, ?You know it didn't happen that way. We're trying to communicate a life of righteousness and truth, so don't taint it with a lie.'
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First of all, he is appealing to God's wisdom which I find amusing. Secondly, this is assuming that those who were contemporaries of Jesus would know all the intricate details of his life and not of just certain isolated instances, which is much more likely. Would the people who were still alive from Jesus's time be witnesses to more than one or two events from his. It is also assuming that those who did have first hand knowledge of Jesus's life somehow were familiar with Mathew's work and were "proofreading" it.
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"Besides," he added, "why would Matthew have fabricated fulfilled prophecies and then be willing to be put to death for following someone who he secretly knew was really not the Messiah? That wouldn't make any sense.
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Seriously? Perhaps because he believed that the prophecies were irrelevant but that it might prevent people from believing in Jesus? If he believed that Jesus actually was the Messiah and that the prophecies weren't binding, why would he
not fabricate fulfilled prophecies?
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"What's more, the Jewish community would have jumped on any
opportunity to discredit the Gospels by pointing out falsehoods. They would have said, ?I was there, and Jesus' bones were broken by the Romans during the crucifixion,'" Lapides said. "But even though the Jewish Talmud refers to Jesus in derogatory ways, it never once makes the claim that the fulfillment of prophecies was falsified. Not one time."
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I'm fairly certain the Jewish community did try to discredit the Gospels. And this also goes back to the assumption that there would be enough people around who not only were first hand witnesses of Jesus's life, but that they had full memories of these events, they were aware of Matthew's writings, they believed it was important to discredit the Gospel, etc. etc.
Sorry if I'm not convinced, but your rebuttal is not very compelling.