A pretty common stance today is that the Bible is just a collection of fables, and that the actual authenticity of it is in question – people talk about shadowy councils deciding what goes in the Bible and what stays out, and bending the story in it to suit their agendas.
But if you have a look at the Bible on an academic level, this is actually far from the truth. We have better records confirming the Bible than we do for historical figures such as Alexander the Great.
Watch a segment of this video from the phenomenal Alpha course discussing “Textual Criticism” – the study of these early documents:
“The textual critic of the New Testament is embarrassed by the wealth of material… Besides textual evidence derived from the New Testament Greek manuscripts and from early versions, the textual critic has available the numerous scriptural quotations included in the commentaries, sermons, and other treatises written by early Church fathers. Indeed, so extensive are these citations that if all other sources for our knowledge of the text of the New Testament were destroyed, they would be sufficient alone for the reconstruction of practically the entire New Testament.”
– Bruce M. Metzger and Bart D. Ehrman, The Text of the New Testament, 4th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 51, 126.