Is the Bible a Reliable Source of History?

How did Christianity become such a major religion? When Christianity was just getting started in Rome, Christians were looked down upon and killed due to most Romans being polytheistic and not sharing the same beliefs as Christians. Today, there are one billion Christians partly because Constantine converted to Christianity, which made it possible for Theodosius to make Christianity the official religion of Rome. That caused many Romans to become Christians. Cultural diffusion occurred, which resulted in there being many Christians throughout the world. Historians have trouble figuring out whether or not the Bible is a reliable source of history. There are some parts of the New Testament where authors are unknown, the authors cannot get the story straight, and they don't really know who and what Jesus was.

We don't know the original authors because there is no original bible, the people who wrote the bible came later on in history. Many things could have happened to the bible, it could have got burned, ripped, or stolen. Since we don't know any of this information, we aren't able to figure out who the true authors were. Not knowing what happened to the original text, makes it difficult for us to trust it. It could have been changed multiple times. Also, the people who supposedly wrote it came after Jesus, how could these authors have written it, if they weren't even alive then? The people who also wrote it didn't use first person. Were they even there? They don't use, "I". They just include their names in the stories to possibly give evidence to the readers that they were in fact there with Jesus.

Because historians cannot determine who the authors' are in the books of the Bible, it leaves them finding it hard to trust the stories in the Bible to be accurate. As readers, we can't say that events in the Bible really happened if we don't even know who wrote it. For example, there were certain books in the Gospels that were written without any author's name, and after the work were already published, others would have claimed to have written it. How could they have written it if the books came before their time? Other times people would record false writers' names into the books, and claim that these people are the writers. The theory that the books were written by the apostles was passed down as tradition. Many historians believe that it was done this way, so that people would believe that it was written by people who experienced being with Jesus. This would cause them to believe the word of God, and become true believers. But we cannot even trust these people even if they were there and saw it for themselves. For example, when we have court trials multiple eyewitnesses are needed. You cannot trust the word of one individual because they may have mixed up the story, and forgot some of the facts and this would cause them to say something that they thought happened when they are just basing it on memory and aren't one hundred percent sure. Another example would be that the Gospel of Matthew, always describes Jesus and his disciples as "they" and never mentions Matthew in first person. In the Gospel of Matthew it doesn't actually say he is the one who wrote it. So, then we start to wonder who is writing?

Discrepancies in the Bible also make it difficult for historians to accept the book as reliable. An example of this is Jesus' death. In the Gospel of John, Jesus, Pontius Pilate, and the Jewish leaders were in different places during trial. Pilate doesn't have a conversation with Jesus, and Pilate says Jesus is innocent three times. However, in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus, Pontius Pilate and the Jewish leaders were all in one location for court, and Pontius Pilate and Jesus have a conversation, but Pilate never claims Jesus to be innocent. This leaves historians