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Raven: alright, then. Just so you know, your sister is awake right now. The sedatives are almost through her system.
*Sighs*
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*Sighs*
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Raven: are you alright, miss katie?
*Nods*
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That depends on what you mean by "the layman."
The problem with your definition of the early church is that at the time that I think you're referring to, several of the common canon works hadn't even been written yet, and several came from other areas where those people would not have access to the works from yet. The latter part of that is only problematic for the OT, since there have been variations in the... I'm blanking on the accurate term at the moment, so I'll substitute "jewish" for it, the jewish canon between the first writings in the NT and latter writings, some of which then affected the christian canon. Further, there's the issue ARAMAIC WAS THE WORD, I'm 75% sure. The jewish and growths from judaism that the holy books for which were written in aramaic languages, specifically. The further issue is that the group you're referring to is after the jewish bible had been translated to and then from latin with some changes before becoming the OT that was used. This leads to the creation of Hell as a concept in place of the judaic afterlife, the integration of every hasatan into the singular Satan (name) due to the King Solomon passages, and a few minor and varying in importance translation issues. Though since this only included the OT and very earliest NT stories, it's not really worth a tangent and we've been over them before anyway. I believe one example, and correct me if I'm wrong, is the removal of the story of the death of Cain. As far as I'm aware, it was either not included in that compilation or was removed since then, and is a good example of such instances. Then came the issue of the apostle who I can never remember which one, who occasionally made up words which have then been translated with varying accuracy. Not a big issue, but surprisingly important in the issue of homosexuality as it is the only mention of it being wrong in the NT that was not a repeating of the OT, barring some variations like we're talking about.
But yes, if you consider the literary canon to begin at that compilation, then you'd have a strong case against many of my previous point in other discussions, since they occurred before that time and therefor you could consider to not be "christian canon," depending on the variant texts we're discussing.
"Early Church" in this context is everything up to the Council of Nicaea. The OT canon is based on Jewish acceptance of scripture beyond the Torah, so fortunately, that acceptance is rather stable.
I'm going to have to disageee with your assertions on changes made to the Old Testament. We have original Hebrew documents before Latin translations to cross-reference to determine accuracy. It is entirely possible that documents exist with this additional information, but it is significantly more likely that these are isolated corruptions of the original texts without evidence that they were the initial depiction of biblical texts. In fact, I have access to a collection of the original Hebrew documents as well as a direct word-by-word translation of those documents (which makes it difficult to read, but there is no translator interpretation at play). You have books such as the Book of Enoch with additional information, but these are not considered authentic documents that would be accepted by Jewish or Christian scholars.
I disagree with your interpretation of the biblical texts' stance on God's intention of human sexuality.
Before what compilation?
Your words suggest that the documents were heavily edited before being accepted into theological canon. As far as I am concerned, heavily edited documents have zero authority in regards to religious direction. If the current version of either Old or New Testament scripture (bearing in mind that this is referring to untranslated text) is not exactly the same as the original (other than minor variations in spelling and such minor discrepancies based on region), then for all intents and purposes, they are fictitious, fallible, and frankly not worth studying as evidence of historical or cultural information of the previous age. Can you provide any documentation that asserts or provides evidence for these supposedly heavily edited texts and reasons that historians do not tend to accept this as accurate?
@Bishop
So, logical reasons to believe in the miraculous depictions of events in the Bible falls into what I mentioned at the end of the last long discussion yesterday, and since that took me a year and a half to write, I'll answer this one after work, since it could also be pretty long.
I'll have to disputed the notion that the apostles were trained superspies with techniques that rival modern methods even though they had no real motive. Of course, we want to examine all possibilities before we can really claim one statement is true over another. I'll write up on that after work as well.
The problem here is that as humans, we don't really have a say in what is "reasonable" when it comes to morality. The idea behind Christian theology is that the Bible was inspired by God, who put it on paper through man (essentially the idea that like we write with pencils, God wrote through the humans who put the Bible into writing). So sin in and of itself is based on God's decision of what is good and evil (good = follows the nature of God and evil = doesn't). Logically speaking, we cannot claim moral superiority to the literal definition of what is/isn't moral. Because God, by definition, is the perfect "good," there is no foundation that anything he does is incorrect. It would be like a program telling a programmer that he shouldn't have coded in x feature. The programmer does what he intends to do. So even though Hell seems like an extreme punishment for someone who has sinned (though I will point out that nobody sins only once), the fact that it is the consequence says that sin is more serious than we perceive it rather than God is unjust in his decision. The Christian theology is that no quantity of good can make up for the amount of evil a single sin brings into our life. (Forgive the programming analogies—I'm a computer scientist)—a single flipped bit can cause an entire program to crash, redefine behavior, or produce bad results. In the scope of the billions of bits that might be in a program, a single flipped zero to one or vice-versa might seem wildly insignificant, but the impact it has is enormous. If it's not an issue with faulty programming logic, the programmer will simply kill the program, destroying it, and start again. However, God gives us a way out of that fate by allowing us to be uncorrupted through him (such as the same programmer who happened to make a data integrity verification/troubleshooting script). So consider it this way: instead of scrapping the project entirely, God put in extra work to allow the existing one to escape destruction. Instead of thinking of it as an angry God sending people to Hell who could otherwise go to Heaven, think of it as a loving God who will allow people who would otherwise go to Hell to be cleaned and go to Heaven. The issue is that we often think that the "default state" of mankind ought to be in heaven, or whatever other good state you'd like to choose. Unfortunately, because mankind is evil, that default ends up being Hell and we're fortunate to have any way to escape.
So, logical reasons to believe in the miraculous depictions of events in the Bible falls into what I mentioned at the end of the last long discussion yesterday, and since that took me a year and a half to write, I'll answer this one after work, since it could also be pretty long.
I'll have to disputed the notion that the apostles were trained superspies with techniques that rival modern methods even though they had no real motive. Of course, we want to examine all possibilities before we can really claim one statement is true over another. I'll write up on that after work as well.
The problem here is that as humans, we don't really have a say in what is "reasonable" when it comes to morality. The idea behind Christian theology is that the Bible was inspired by God, who put it on paper through man (essentially the idea that like we write with pencils, God wrote through the humans who put the Bible into writing). So sin in and of itself is based on God's decision of what is good and evil (good = follows the nature of God and evil = doesn't). Logically speaking, we cannot claim moral superiority to the literal definition of what is/isn't moral. Because God, by definition, is the perfect "good," there is no foundation that anything he does is incorrect. It would be like a program telling a programmer that he shouldn't have coded in x feature. The programmer does what he intends to do. So even though Hell seems like an extreme punishment for someone who has sinned (though I will point out that nobody sins only once), the fact that it is the consequence says that sin is more serious than we perceive it rather than God is unjust in his decision. The Christian theology is that no quantity of good can make up for the amount of evil a single sin brings into our life. (Forgive the programming analogies—I'm a computer scientist)—a single flipped bit can cause an entire program to crash, redefine behavior, or produce bad results. In the scope of the billions of bits that might be in a program, a single flipped zero to one or vice-versa might seem wildly insignificant, but the impact it has is enormous. If it's not an issue with faulty programming logic, the programmer will simply kill the program, destroying it, and start again. However, God gives us a way out of that fate by allowing us to be uncorrupted through him (such as the same programmer who happened to make a data integrity verification/troubleshooting script). So consider it this way: instead of scrapping the project entirely, God put in extra work to allow the existing one to escape destruction. Instead of thinking of it as an angry God sending people to Hell who could otherwise go to Heaven, think of it as a loving God who will allow people who would otherwise go to Hell to be cleaned and go to Heaven. The issue is that we often think that the "default state" of mankind ought to be in heaven, or whatever other good state you'd like to choose. Unfortunately, because mankind is evil, that default ends up being Hell and we're fortunate to have any way to escape.
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I'm not saying that he didn't, just that there's only one real source that he did in any way even similar to the stories, ie being a religious teacher and not just some random guy who was sympathetic enough in the public to be made into the main focus after the fact.
That's just false. Several of the apostles don't even have evidence that they wrote anything. The major ones in the bible do, I'm pretty sure Luke, John, and two other of the major ones actually have more evidence of existing than yeshua did, but a couple really don't.
You're misunderstanding my point. I'm not saying that the canon isn't well established. You're right that around 50-70 books are incredibly common, but several of them as well as several that you wouldn't consider canon, the Apacrypha being a good example yes, are considered canon to a good number of sects. Then there's the "non-biblical" books, the ones considered canon by a sect even though they aren't printed as a part of the bible as a book. You also say "early church" but I don't think you're referring to that correctly. The "common" books were compiled together and given canon status relatively recently, and there were at least two major events since then that have notably changed things. Keep in mind that a huge chunk of christians use the KJV, and it was specifically re-translated, altered, and in some spots recompiled in order to be better sounding and easier to sell to people. Your thought that somehow all christians have this same pool they use just isn't right. Much of it is the same across all sects, you'd be hard pressed to find a christian who doesn't consider John to be canon, at least for the most part. But even with the common books, interpretations, and therefor what the canon is for all intents and purposes, varies WIDELY. If you want to talk specifically about the physical books in terms of canon, yes, you are about 90% correct. There are about 60ish books that will show up almost every time. If you want to talk about what they follow as canon, which is generally what I refer to, then there's a wide bell-curve to keep in mind.
I'm not arguing that we know who wrote every book. It's only really relevant in the four gospels, and we do know who wrote those as you mentioned. I'm not saying that all of them wrote something either. We have evidence of authorship in "the major ones in the Bible," and the ones in the Bible are the only ones in referring to. It seems as though you think I'm referring to external authors.
Now we're getting somewhere. I'll argue that the breadth of disputed books is much narrower than 20 books—it's closer to a cap of 5 with some fringe sects believing otherwise. The main 66 are well established and widely adopted, and the significance of the disputed books is minimal.
If we're going to talk about translation, however, I totally agree that KJV is not an authoritative source of accuracy. I do believe that you are overstating the significance of the disparacies between that version and the original, but keep in mind that this was the first translation of the Latin scripture into English, so the process wasn't exactly as ideal as it is now. But when compared to ESV (widely regarded as one of the most accurate translations), there aren't particularly any theological differences. Fortunately, we have access to extremely early texts and thousands of samples to determine that the original writings were not corrupted over time.
You seem to be referring to what many believers read as "Bible books," even if they're not part of the actual scripture (which is what your statement regarding what they follow as canon seems to get across). Correct me if I'm wrong in this, but the difference is that I'm not exactly interested in sources the layman will follow outside of the main biblical text because those aren't sources of the main theology.
Finally, when I refer to the "early Church," I mean before the establishment of the Holy Roman Empire or even the Catholic Church itself. At this time, believers were referred to as followers of "The Way" until they were initially called Christians at Antioch. Even before the Council of Nicaea, these early Christians had already established amongst themselves what would be considered literary canon (save discussions on books like James and Revelation, as previously mentioned).
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Raven: *walks in*
You two seem to be getting along.
...
@Bishop
Super fair question. The main issue with the trickster hypothesis (I made up that name) is that, save perhaps one or two fringe cases I am not aware of, nobody will willingly die for what they know to be a lie. When the apostles are being hunted or tortured to death by the Romans, they still contend that what they say is true. They could have escaped persecution by admitting their own lie or (if they are telling the truth) lying and say that what they wrote is false. But the fact that they never gave it up shows that they have a deep conviction that what they write is accurate. To answer the question regarding them using their own flaws to appear human, the issue is that the Bible is extremely negative about some of the acts and thoughts of the apostles. The reason that this is such a widely accepted method by historians is because they did significantly more harm to their own case through both their faults and the way they said events occurred (such as the women at the tomb) than any help that they could have gained from this is overshadowed by the damage that would be done. Plus, people in this day and age weren't exactly too keen on human psychology, so it would have been difficult to be that cunning.
That being said, it leaves two real possibilities. Either the apostles were totally crazy, as well as everyone cited as sources, and anyone who was also an eyewitness as well (the Jesus=elite hypnotist idea), or they were telling the truth. But the issue with the idea that Jesus was the real fraud behind it all is that he also died for what he taught, more severely than any of the others. So is Jesus some super-magician who can hypnotize thousands of people into seeing things that weren't there and then being tortured to death for what he knows to be false (something that nobody does) or is totally crazy himself but is at the same time cunning enough to commit this huge ruse? Perhaps, but it's also a complex and unnecessarily more intricate explanation with a thousand points of failure than accepting the historicity of the New Testament (even if you reject the miracles). Plus, the uber-magician hypothesis ends up collapsing under scrutiny when you consider all of the people who never met Jesus or any of the apostles directly but were still able to verify the non-miraculous events (since you have to be an eyewitness to affirm these) as they are depicted.
The answer to this question is much shorter. I believe in Hell because I believe the Bible is true.
Super fair question. The main issue with the trickster hypothesis (I made up that name) is that, save perhaps one or two fringe cases I am not aware of, nobody will willingly die for what they know to be a lie. When the apostles are being hunted or tortured to death by the Romans, they still contend that what they say is true. They could have escaped persecution by admitting their own lie or (if they are telling the truth) lying and say that what they wrote is false. But the fact that they never gave it up shows that they have a deep conviction that what they write is accurate. To answer the question regarding them using their own flaws to appear human, the issue is that the Bible is extremely negative about some of the acts and thoughts of the apostles. The reason that this is such a widely accepted method by historians is because they did significantly more harm to their own case through both their faults and the way they said events occurred (such as the women at the tomb) than any help that they could have gained from this is overshadowed by the damage that would be done. Plus, people in this day and age weren't exactly too keen on human psychology, so it would have been difficult to be that cunning.
That being said, it leaves two real possibilities. Either the apostles were totally crazy, as well as everyone cited as sources, and anyone who was also an eyewitness as well (the Jesus=elite hypnotist idea), or they were telling the truth. But the issue with the idea that Jesus was the real fraud behind it all is that he also died for what he taught, more severely than any of the others. So is Jesus some super-magician who can hypnotize thousands of people into seeing things that weren't there and then being tortured to death for what he knows to be false (something that nobody does) or is totally crazy himself but is at the same time cunning enough to commit this huge ruse? Perhaps, but it's also a complex and unnecessarily more intricate explanation with a thousand points of failure than accepting the historicity of the New Testament (even if you reject the miracles). Plus, the uber-magician hypothesis ends up collapsing under scrutiny when you consider all of the people who never met Jesus or any of the apostles directly but were still able to verify the non-miraculous events (since you have to be an eyewitness to affirm these) as they are depicted.
The answer to this question is much shorter. I believe in Hell because I believe the Bible is true.
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"You cannot take gnostic or other internal texts..." Uhm... I wasn't using them to argue against the canon, just to point out examples of characters being based on real people. If I wrote a story about Jaden Smith saving the world, it would be historical fiction.
Further, you can't claim legitimacy based on religious texts. Of course they're going to say that they're true.
Your first statement is simply false. There are two mentions of yeshua in secular sources, and the one that would give the most legitimacy to the scripture stories is widely believed to have been altered for the purposes of doing so, as there are many inaccuracies in it compared to other historical records. The other simply mentions that there was someone by that name who was crucified around the same time period as the story claims.
I'm talking about appolonius, one of the many other supposed messiahs who had people claim they performed miracles. The same miracles as yeshua is described as doing, in large part.
"Jesus" is technically a roman translation, for the record. Much like "Jahovah."
Several of the apostles' writings have been dated as written many years after the death of yeshua, and in some cases the death of the supposed apostle, including ones that claim to have been written at the time the events happened. There are several apostles and writers that have no secular confirmation of their existence.
Not once did I mention the canon of any sect of christianity. I was talking about it in terms of the way the stories were written, not whether or not christians believe them to be accurate. Beyond that, you really can't say "legitimate christian literary canon" because what is and isn't canon varies greatly between the sects and denominations. This has been a point that has been brought up between us countless times, and it's really annoying when you do that.
I'm going to need your sources because these statements are false. Yeshua = Jesus and Apollonius = Apollos, an early apostle that has (I believe one) source that wrote about him outside of the Bible and isn't considered reliable. But if you want to argue against the existence of Jesus in the first place, you have an uphill battle because that fact is widely accepted by historians. I'll quote this webpage that has dozens of sources listed:
"Virtually all New Testament scholars and Near East historians, applying the standard criteria of historical investigation, find that the historicity of Jesus is more probable than not,[4][5][6][7][nb 1][nb 2][nb 3][nb 4] although they differ about the beliefs and teachings of Jesus as well as the accuracy of the details of his life that have been described in the gospels.[nb 5][13][nb 6][15]:168–173 While scholars have criticized Jesus scholarship for religious bias and lack of methodological soundness,[nb 7] with very few exceptions such critics generally do support the historicity of Jesus and reject the Christ myth theory that Jesus never existed."
Source: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_o…
I mentioned that Jesus is a translation of Yeshua. Same as Yahweh or Jehovah, as you noted.
The four gospels were written within thirty years of the death of Jesus, which, from a historical perspective, is a remarkably short time period (I remarked on all of this and more in my long section). None of the texts attributed to the apostles have any evidence that they were written by anyone other than who is thought to have written them.
Finally, if it's annoying, let us settle it. You have a misconception that the canon varies wildly from sect to sect. However, the core canon of 66 books (which was widely accepted by the early Church as the biblical text with very little variation, save books such as James and Revelation) is widely accepted among virtually every denomination and with perhaps one or two additional texts that are considered by some to also be a part of scripture (and by very few individuals as well—you may point to the Apocrypha, but that's even sectioned off in many Bibles that contain it as a "Hey, we aren't sure about this" book). This notion that the biblical canon is not well established is ludicrous and has no foundation when taking Christian theology into question.
@Bishop
As for the legitimacy of New Testament writings, we have the fortune of the events being so recent (less than two thousand years ago) that we have an incredible deal of information regarding the development of early Christianity and the way that the books were distributed. One of the greatest factors is that these events are not recorded by historians hundreds or even thousands of years after the original events occurred (I'll point to Alexander the Great, the earliest biography of whose was written over four hundred years after his death). In contrast, the events depicted in the New Testament were recorded within thirty years of the death of Jesus (which, in terms of ancient historical records, is nothing). (I'd also like to add that the reason they were written as late as they were instead of immediately after is because the Jewish culture was very orally-oriented, meaning that for the most part, information was passed by word of mouth and information was only documented when it was to be preserved—though the Jews took very good care in ensuring accuracy when creating these records. They were likely written near the end of the lives of the original authors who decided that they would write down their sermons, experience, or other information. They also did not collaborate in their writings, based on style, information, and date of the original creation of the documents.) While the New Testament is much more moralistic than it was historical (in contrast to the Old Testament, which is much more a collection of history that happens to shine light on the actions and nature of God), it has a great deal of history involved and several sociopolitical factors at play in the origins of its spread. The primary goal of the New Testament was not to preserve history or even religious law, but rather to show that the Jewish covenant (The Law of Moses) was now overwritten by the law of Christ, shifting the focus of the relationship with God from a traditional, action-oriented approach to one based on intention and personal interaction with God. So because of this, historians have less to argue about in terms of historical legitimacy, because several books (like many of Paul's letters) are written with religious instruction and little to no historical information (other than perhaps something along the lines of "I am writing from Galatia" or "I traveled to Damascus," which historians have no real reason to question).
Like the court of law, when historians seek to show that a document has the potential to be false, they often look for intention on the part of the author to falsify information. Perhaps this is where the misconception that the Bible could have been written for political or religious power, but unfortunately, the fact of the matter is that early Christians were very much persecuted for their beliefs, and this is well documented in extrabiblical ancient writings. In fact, the original apostles and early Christians would only have to reject their writings as falsehoods in order to escape persecution, but they held onto their statements throughout both torture and execution (which the Romans were particularly skilled at). Historians recognize that they died for their beliefs and reject the notion that they would have allowed themselves to be tortured and killed to perpetuate what they knew to be falsehood. For this reason, we know that the original apostles and early Church very much believed in what they taught. The question at that point is no longer "are they lying about their experiences," but rather "can the information presented in these documents be trusted as historically accurate?"
Because of the spread of the writings of the apostles after the events were recorded, we can track how they spread, when, and where rather easily. Because we know of both the culture and the time period of those who joined Christianity of that age, we don't have reason to believe that the original documents are forgeries or have false authorship, because the documents would not be accepted into early Christianity if they had. In fact, we have several case studies where early authors who did seek to gain religious authority attempted to introduce forged documents such as the Gnostic texts, which were rejected by the early Church due to the rigorous standards and methods used to determine whether the document in question was legitimate. Based on these facts, we can conclude that the documents in the New Testament are original and that the authors are who they claim to be (though nobody is aware of who wrote the book of Hebrews). Then the question becomes whether or not these accounts have been corrupted (and there were many attempts to corrupt the original New Testament books throughout the history of the early Church). However, due to the aforementioned documentation procedures by the Jewish people, it has been found that the original text of the New Testament has been preserve with 99.5 percent accuracy, with the remaining half a percent being minor variations in the spellings of names, potentially due to regional differences. However, there has been zero change in meaning or even wording in the original documents; we know this because we have found more copies of early New Testament manuscripts than any other ancient document (with over 5,800 complete or fragmented Greek manuscripts, 10,000 Latin manuscripts and 9,300 manuscripts in various other ancient languages including Syriac, Slavic, Gothic, Ethiopic, Coptic and Armenian, according to New Testament historian Ehrman, I believe).
At this point, we know that the New Testament manuscripts are authentic, unchanged, by eyewitnesses, and believed to be true by both the authors and the early Church. To outline further evidence that historians examine in order to determine the legitimacy of writings, we can turn to the same factors we looked at before: embarrassment and hurting one's own case. If the disciples wanted religious power, they would have written off a majority of their mistakes and errors when creating the texts. However, the four gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) as well as other New Testament books are filled with mistakes made by the apostles (and contain very little of what they actually did right). It showed them in disbelief, in lack of faith, in anger, and in other unflattering positions that would not have been brought up had they been manufacturing their experiences. In addition, the disciples also hurt their own cause by attacking their own reputations with their improper behavior, but, more importantly, through the eyewitnesses after their claims of a resurrection. They claimed that the first people who had seen the tomb of Jesus empty were two women, and according to ancient Jewish tradition, women are unreliable sources of information. There is no case in which the authors of the New Testament would have cited women as the eyewitnesses of the empty tomb and the first citing of Jesus after his death, unless they were recounting legitimate acts that had taken place (to clarify: that this account is legitimate, but this does not prove that Jesus rose from the dead in and of itself). The next most impactful evidence is that the authors of the New Testament named specific people as additional sources for some of their accounts. In this culture and style of writing, when a source is named, this means that the individual cited is still alive, well known, and can be asked to testify toward the accuracy of the claims presented. If the accounts of the New Testament had been illegitimate, there would have been disputes and qualms with naming people who did not exist, people who had died, or people who did not truly back up their claim, the writings would have been rejected and the belief discarded. This means that, if nothing else, the writings of the New Testament are historically accurate and are accepted by many historians to be accurate depictions of the world and acts of the Jewish people of that time with several external sources to support the accounts.
The only real area where legitimacy is significantly challenged is in the depictions of miracles in both the Old and New Testament, but the problem that many historians face is why the historical accounts have so much evidence to support them when (on an individual basis), the historian may not believe in miracles. So the solution for many of them is to create a naturalistic explanation for many of the events in the Bible, which the people of the time attributed to God out of ignorance. While some absolutely can be patterned to follow this trend (as Christian and Jewish theology both assert that God often utilizes both natural and supernatural occurrences to administer his will—see: the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, likely by volcano), there are far too many claims that do not have any natural analogue to be able to reduce to ad hoc explanations for natural events.
If you have any questions or disagreements, I'd be happy to address those, or I could also discuss the proposed solutions/countersolutions to this issue of historical accuracy/miraculous nature misalignment.
As for the legitimacy of New Testament writings, we have the fortune of the events being so recent (less than two thousand years ago) that we have an incredible deal of information regarding the development of early Christianity and the way that the books were distributed. One of the greatest factors is that these events are not recorded by historians hundreds or even thousands of years after the original events occurred (I'll point to Alexander the Great, the earliest biography of whose was written over four hundred years after his death). In contrast, the events depicted in the New Testament were recorded within thirty years of the death of Jesus (which, in terms of ancient historical records, is nothing). (I'd also like to add that the reason they were written as late as they were instead of immediately after is because the Jewish culture was very orally-oriented, meaning that for the most part, information was passed by word of mouth and information was only documented when it was to be preserved—though the Jews took very good care in ensuring accuracy when creating these records. They were likely written near the end of the lives of the original authors who decided that they would write down their sermons, experience, or other information. They also did not collaborate in their writings, based on style, information, and date of the original creation of the documents.) While the New Testament is much more moralistic than it was historical (in contrast to the Old Testament, which is much more a collection of history that happens to shine light on the actions and nature of God), it has a great deal of history involved and several sociopolitical factors at play in the origins of its spread. The primary goal of the New Testament was not to preserve history or even religious law, but rather to show that the Jewish covenant (The Law of Moses) was now overwritten by the law of Christ, shifting the focus of the relationship with God from a traditional, action-oriented approach to one based on intention and personal interaction with God. So because of this, historians have less to argue about in terms of historical legitimacy, because several books (like many of Paul's letters) are written with religious instruction and little to no historical information (other than perhaps something along the lines of "I am writing from Galatia" or "I traveled to Damascus," which historians have no real reason to question).
Like the court of law, when historians seek to show that a document has the potential to be false, they often look for intention on the part of the author to falsify information. Perhaps this is where the misconception that the Bible could have been written for political or religious power, but unfortunately, the fact of the matter is that early Christians were very much persecuted for their beliefs, and this is well documented in extrabiblical ancient writings. In fact, the original apostles and early Christians would only have to reject their writings as falsehoods in order to escape persecution, but they held onto their statements throughout both torture and execution (which the Romans were particularly skilled at). Historians recognize that they died for their beliefs and reject the notion that they would have allowed themselves to be tortured and killed to perpetuate what they knew to be falsehood. For this reason, we know that the original apostles and early Church very much believed in what they taught. The question at that point is no longer "are they lying about their experiences," but rather "can the information presented in these documents be trusted as historically accurate?"
Because of the spread of the writings of the apostles after the events were recorded, we can track how they spread, when, and where rather easily. Because we know of both the culture and the time period of those who joined Christianity of that age, we don't have reason to believe that the original documents are forgeries or have false authorship, because the documents would not be accepted into early Christianity if they had. In fact, we have several case studies where early authors who did seek to gain religious authority attempted to introduce forged documents such as the Gnostic texts, which were rejected by the early Church due to the rigorous standards and methods used to determine whether the document in question was legitimate. Based on these facts, we can conclude that the documents in the New Testament are original and that the authors are who they claim to be (though nobody is aware of who wrote the book of Hebrews). Then the question becomes whether or not these accounts have been corrupted (and there were many attempts to corrupt the original New Testament books throughout the history of the early Church). However, due to the aforementioned documentation procedures by the Jewish people, it has been found that the original text of the New Testament has been preserve with 99.5 percent accuracy, with the remaining half a percent being minor variations in the spellings of names, potentially due to regional differences. However, there has been zero change in meaning or even wording in the original documents; we know this because we have found more copies of early New Testament manuscripts than any other ancient document (with over 5,800 complete or fragmented Greek manuscripts, 10,000 Latin manuscripts and 9,300 manuscripts in various other ancient languages including Syriac, Slavic, Gothic, Ethiopic, Coptic and Armenian, according to New Testament historian Ehrman, I believe).
At this point, we know that the New Testament manuscripts are authentic, unchanged, by eyewitnesses, and believed to be true by both the authors and the early Church. To outline further evidence that historians examine in order to determine the legitimacy of writings, we can turn to the same factors we looked at before: embarrassment and hurting one's own case. If the disciples wanted religious power, they would have written off a majority of their mistakes and errors when creating the texts. However, the four gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) as well as other New Testament books are filled with mistakes made by the apostles (and contain very little of what they actually did right). It showed them in disbelief, in lack of faith, in anger, and in other unflattering positions that would not have been brought up had they been manufacturing their experiences. In addition, the disciples also hurt their own cause by attacking their own reputations with their improper behavior, but, more importantly, through the eyewitnesses after their claims of a resurrection. They claimed that the first people who had seen the tomb of Jesus empty were two women, and according to ancient Jewish tradition, women are unreliable sources of information. There is no case in which the authors of the New Testament would have cited women as the eyewitnesses of the empty tomb and the first citing of Jesus after his death, unless they were recounting legitimate acts that had taken place (to clarify: that this account is legitimate, but this does not prove that Jesus rose from the dead in and of itself). The next most impactful evidence is that the authors of the New Testament named specific people as additional sources for some of their accounts. In this culture and style of writing, when a source is named, this means that the individual cited is still alive, well known, and can be asked to testify toward the accuracy of the claims presented. If the accounts of the New Testament had been illegitimate, there would have been disputes and qualms with naming people who did not exist, people who had died, or people who did not truly back up their claim, the writings would have been rejected and the belief discarded. This means that, if nothing else, the writings of the New Testament are historically accurate and are accepted by many historians to be accurate depictions of the world and acts of the Jewish people of that time with several external sources to support the accounts.
The only real area where legitimacy is significantly challenged is in the depictions of miracles in both the Old and New Testament, but the problem that many historians face is why the historical accounts have so much evidence to support them when (on an individual basis), the historian may not believe in miracles. So the solution for many of them is to create a naturalistic explanation for many of the events in the Bible, which the people of the time attributed to God out of ignorance. While some absolutely can be patterned to follow this trend (as Christian and Jewish theology both assert that God often utilizes both natural and supernatural occurrences to administer his will—see: the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, likely by volcano), there are far too many claims that do not have any natural analogue to be able to reduce to ad hoc explanations for natural events.
If you have any questions or disagreements, I'd be happy to address those, or I could also discuss the proposed solutions/countersolutions to this issue of historical accuracy/miraculous nature misalignment.
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