For the dispassionate student of religion inherent contradictions within the bible are ground enough to ask questions about its teachings and infallibility. One important ground for investigation as to the accuracy and hence argument for infallibility of the bible is authenticity of verifiable historical events alluded to in the bible. The Bible is world’s bestselling book. It was written by at least 40 different authors over a period of 1,600 years. The separate authors had varied backgrounds ranging from Peasants, kings to hermits. To date over 24,000 ancient manuscripts of the bible mainly the New Testament have been recovered to date. The second best preserved book of a comparable age Homers Iliad has only 643 manuscripts discovered to date.
How likely is it that the bible is a true and authentic account of history and why is this important when queering the bible? It is important to investigate the historical details of the bible in comparison with known historical facts about the very same events. This will help ascertain the accuracy of the biblical rendition of historical happenings and hence the creation of an index of accuracy. Since some historical details have been recorded in verifiable accounts, should the bible demonstrate similar accuracy then it can be assumed to be similarly accurate for those recordings that cannot be verified. This however is harder than it sounds, since the bible seldom presents coherent historical accounts. Rather its accounts are mixed with maxims, religious explanations and prophecies that alluded to the event.
To conduct such a study aiming to determine the accuracy of biblical accounts the skeptic questioning the bible can avail him or herself of several a number of tools. One non bible source of historical information is other near Eastern texts, inscriptions and documents. Material that has been recovered from the biblical mentioned area by archeological excavation has been analyzed by modern technical and scientific equipment. Demography, historical geography, technology studies, comparative linguistic techniques and analysis has been done. Anthropological and sociological modeling plus the Apocrypha or non-canonical texts are used as models and documents for the purposes of historical investigation.
A very debatable area of the bible and one that purports to contain a lot historical detail is the Pentateuch: the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings and Chronicles. These books have traditionally been basis for serious questions on the authorship and genuineness of historical detail of the bible. The books in question record over 500 years, from 1000BC to 500BC. However most authorities agree that the account of events found in these books are more polemical than factual. Scholars including Albrecht Alt and Martin Noth have argued that the stories given have genuine events at their core. However the renditions of narratives are fictional framing for religious teachings and cannot be regarded as history particularly in modern sense of the word.
In short the bible is not a source of facts. And if truthful is same as factual then the bible is truthful. However, that having been said, it should be realized that only historical information can be tested for accuracy and even then, considering that some 3500 have passed between the writing of the bible and the modern age, the historical information is synonymous with educated guesses. The domain of the bible is the relationship between man and God and not recording of events that have happened to man throughout history. Therefore while the historical detail is inaccurate, theological soundness of the bible cannot be ascertained and perhaps cannot even be disputed.