Here is Dr. Kruger, student of Dr. Ehrman on the historical reliability of the scriptures. Take a listen and maybe there will be thoughts you can ponder.
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This is not the conception of “historical reliability” that I’m used to seeing discussed. Certainly, changes in the text itself throughout history would be a concern for the text’s reliability, and you can have that debate about different translations, etc. But the question of whether the Bible is historically reliable has to do with whether history as recorded in the Bible matches up with history as it happened in the real world.
Very simply, it doesn’t. There’s a stunning lack of evidence that the Exodus ever happened, to the extent that its absence despite the presence of other, older archaeological finds in the same region does itself constitute evidence that it did not happen — that’s 1/5 of the Torah right there. We know that Jericho had fallen into ruins centuries before Joshua showed up. The dates and timelines presented for Jesus’ life in the Gospels don’t match up with each other, and the confirmable details don’t match up with any other historical record. (No census requiring everyone to go to their ancestral homes [which would be absurd anyway], various politicians’ dates in office not lining up with biblical claims, etc.)
Dr. Kruger can talk all he wants about how we have very old copies of the books of the Bible. It doesn’t matter who he was a student of. This topic just plainly has nothing to do with whether the Bible is a historically reliable document, unless you are talking about the incredibly trivial point of whether the Bible has historically always said something like what we understand it to say today.
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NFQ, I’d refer you to a couple of sources which summarize data from text critics, archaeologists and historians. This video is a short speech by Dr. Habermas, probably one of the best researchers on the historical Jesus.
More on Old Testament and specifically archaeological research:
http://cheekytour.blogspot.com/2008/05/is-old-testament-historically-reliable.html
For the followers of Jesus the historicity of Jesus is critical. I believe we have a great case. Most of what you mention above relates to Jewish history. Much of what is recorded in the Gospels does match up in fact. You will have to point to sources and specific references before I could respond to something specifically.
Let me know if you want to discuss this further.
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