Thanks for the response.

Yes, as you probably gathered, I wasn't agreeing with Dawkins.

What you are saying can end in a circle. Are there any serious independent scholars, as opposed to committed Christians, who now believe that Matthew the tax-gatherer wrote the gospel bearing his name? Was Mark really Peter's secretary? If the gospel of John was written when scholars believe, he would have to have been very old. I believe that most scholars think the gospels were written anonymously with pseudonyms.

There is therefore a lot of doubt now about whether the four chosen gospels were indeed apostolic. Once the early Church had convinced itself of this, however, it obviously had an interest in promoting that view. We are therefore going round in circles.

I assume by 'adoptionistic language' you are referring to the theory of Adoptionism? If so, according to scholar Bart Ehrman, there was a highly adoptionist line in an early version of Luke, which was later removed. This means that the Church had no problem with editing the texts even if they considered them apostolic, in order to reinforce the Christology viewpoint it was promoting.

I personally wouldn't place too much faith in what Irenaeus says. He seems to have a rather closed mind. In any case, I assume his reference to 4 being the perfect number does not refer to the existing gospels, rather to a more esoteric tradition.