Man did not land on the moon in 1969?

On what evidence is your faith in Jesus based?

On what evidence is your faith in Jesus based? Indeed, how do we know there is a God?

Subjective evidence

Faith: Personal conviction/revelation/faith in God/faith in the Bible

Belief: Personal experience/faith-feedback/trusted testimony/ miracle/answers to prayer

Objective evidence

Creation: how is all this possible without a God? But there are alternate explanations - Evolution/physics/chance.

Bible: God's word to man; a remarkable self-consistent document that has stood the test of culture, language and time

Jesus: As reported in the bible - Jesus' life/miracles/resurrection/profound teaching as reported in the bible.

Other prophets/agents: As reported in the bible - God's messengers given powers or special information demonstrating that they must have been enabled by God.

As Christians we place a lot of faith in the Bible as a truthful document. It is from the bible that our understanding of the nature of God is derived and from which we obtain out model and code to live. The bible contains the teachings of Jesus whom the bible tells us is Gods own son. Should we blindly accept the veracity of the Bible? Are there methods to test that is hasn't been tampered with? Yes.

Distinguish between Historical Reliability and Interpretive reliability

By "Historical" I mean; did is really all happen? E.g. Moses lead the Israelites out of Egypt through the Red Sea after Egypt was beset by a number of natural disasters.

By "Interpretation", I mean; did it all really happen for the reasons given? E.g. God brought successive plagues on Egypt until Pharaoh let the Israelites go then parted the Red Sea to provide an escape route from Pharaoh's army.

Tonight I just want to consider the Bible's historical reliability. So let's start with a more recent controversial historical event.

Man did not land on the moon in 1969: true or false?

The Fox documentary (2001) claimed that 20% of Americans doubt that the moon landings were real.

In the absence of direct and substantial evidence (being there ourselves or the ability to view equipment/footprints left behind), how can we trust the official account? How can we be sure? We can't be 100% sure but we can reduce the chance of fraud substantially by applying some simple tests.

Here are three tests we can apply for historical reliability of documents (proposed by Sanders as a method for determining the reliability of military accounts of battle):

1. Bibliographical (i.e., the textual tradition from the original documents to the copies and manuscripts of that document we possess today). We have millions of original documents, thousands or photographs, hundreds of hours of video made by people mostly still alive.
2. Internal evidence (what the documents claims for itself). All documentation is internally credible. Contradictions claimed by conspiracy theorists can be easily explained by science.
3. External evidence (how the document squares or aligns itself with facts, dates, persons from its own contemporary world). All external evidence surrounding the claim agrees with the claims made in the documents. There is a ton of documented evidence by groups other that those making the claim supporting the claim.

We can apply other tests and if a document is sound, then as each test is passed the likelihood that the document is reliable grows until there seems to be little point investigating further.

We can apply the same tests to the Bible and you can be sure that these tests and many others have been passed by the bible through the centuries with flying colours.

Bible background

But first consider the Bible as an historical document:

The Bible is a collection of sixty-six books composed by many authors over almost 1500 years throughout the Middle East.

Authors include adopted Egyptian nobility (Moses), a shepherd (David), a Babylonian official (Daniel), a tax collector (Matthew), a doctor (Luke), a philosopher/rabbi (Paul), and a fisherman (Peter).

The Bible includes poetry, history, government records, prophecy, dialogue, parables, sermons, letters, and religious instructions.

The Bible is written in three languages, Hebrew (Old Testament), Aramaic (part of Daniel), and Greek (New Testament).

Despite this diversity, the Bible has been remarkably preserved and is widely supported by tradition, history, archaeology, science, and philosophy.

Test the Bible

So let's apply our test:

1. Bibliographical (i.e., the textual tradition from the original documents to the copies and manuscripts of that document we possess today).
   
   Like all ancient manuscripts, to preserve important materials, copies were made, first in Papyrus manuscripts and later in more sturdy parchment, made of skins. The earliest known papyrus fragment about Jesus is from the biography of John, dated from 100 to 150 AD.
   
   The new testament has survived in more manuscripts than any other book from antiquity, and in a purer form than any other great book. There are over 5,000 Greek manuscripts of the new testament, and if other languages are considered, there are about 24,000 manuscripts. Next to the new testament, the greatest amount of manuscript testimony is of Homer's Iliad, which was the bible of the ancient Greeks, composed in 800 BC. There are fewer than 650 manuscripts of the Iliad, dating from the second- and third-century AD.
2. Internal evidence (what the documents claims for itself).
   
   No fundamental contradictions despite being written by many people of many cultured over thousands of years in different languages.
   
   Bible heroes are shown warts and all. Eg. Peter denies Jesus, King David commits adultery with murder as the encore. Not something you'd expect if it was a propaganda tool.
   
   It has stood the test of time as true and useful to mankind. Whole civilisations have been built upon it. Eg. Ours!
   
   
3. External evidence (how the document squares or aligns itself with facts, dates, persons from its own contemporary world).
   
   Archaeological evidence
   
   Although it is not possible to verify every incident in the Bible, the discoveries of archaeology since the mid 1800s have demonstrated the reliability and plausibility of the Bible historical account. For example:
   
   The discovery of the Ebla archive in northern Syria in the 1970s has shown the Biblical writings concerning the Patriarchs to be viable. Documents written on clay tablets from around 2300 B.C. demonstrate that personal and place names in the Patriarchal accounts are genuine. The name "Canaan" was in use in Ebla, a name critics once said was not used at that time and was used incorrectly in the early chapters of the Bible. The word "tehom" ("the deep") in Genesis 1:2 was said to be a late word demonstrating the late writing of the creation story. "Tehom" was part of the vocabulary at Ebla, in use some 800 years before Moses. Ancient customs reflected in the stories of the Patriarchs have also been found in clay tablets from Nuzi and Mari.
   
   The Hittites were once thought to be a Biblical legend, until their capital and records were discovered at Bogazkoy, Turkey. Many thought the Biblical references to Solomon's wealth were greatly exaggerated. Recovered records from the past show that wealth in antiquity was concentrated with the king and Solomon's prosperity was entirely feasible. It was once claimed there was no Assyrian king named Sargon as recorded in Isaiah 20:1, because this name was not known in any other record. Then, Sargon's palace was discovered in Khorsabad, Iraq. The very event mentioned in Isaiah 20, his capture of Ashdod, was recorded on the palace walls. What is more, fragments of a stela memorializing the victory were found at Ashdod itself.
   
   Another king who was in doubt was Belshazzar, king of Babylon, named in Daniel 5. The last king of Babylon was Nabonidus according to recorded history. Tablets were found showing that Belshazzar was Nabonidus' son who served as coregent in Babylon. Thus, Belshazzar could offer to make Daniel "third highest ruler in the kingdom" (Dan. 5:16) for reading the handwriting on the wall, the highest available position. Here we see the "eye-witness" nature of the Biblical record, as is so often brought out by the discoveries of archaeology.
   
   Other archaeological evidence is…
   
   External accounts
   
   There are accounts of Jesus outside the bible giving credibility to the historical accuracy of the bible. Historians starting from the time of Jesus have included references to Jesus within their historical references.
   
   Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (37-100 AD) wrote in his "Jewish Antiquities":
   
   "Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, (if it be lawful to call him a man,) for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. (He was the Christ;) and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, (for he appeared to them alive again the third day,) as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct to this day." [Note: Interpolations, possibly added by others, are indicated in parenthesis.]
   
   Also, the first century Roman historian, Tacitus (56-120 AD), wrote:
   
   "Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberias at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome..."

Summary

So in summary:

Our faith relies on subjective and objective evidence.

Apart from a personal conviction, it's hard to test the reliability of subjective evidence. It might be true to use but that's about the extent of the argument.

The most testable evidence is objective evidence and the most compelling objective evidence is reported in the bible.

So, if we can show that the bible is reliable we have come a long way providing evidence for the faith we hold.

It is useful to separate out historical from interpretive reliability. Today we've discussed the bible's historical reliability (which is far easy).

We have done this by applying three tests used to determine the historical accuracy of a document:

1. Bibliographical (i.e., the textual tradition from the original documents to the copies and manuscripts of that document we possess today). We found that there is an comparatively overwhelming amount of evidence to show that the bible account is still given as it was written.
2. Internal evidence (what the documents claims for itself). The bible's internal consistency, impartial treatment of its principle characters and its survivability through millennia gives us great confidence that it is historically reliable.
3. External evidence (how the document squares or aligns itself with facts, dates, persons from its own contemporary world). There is no contradictory archaeological evidence in fact all archaeological evidence confirms that account given in the bible.

So, we conclude that the bible is historically accurate in that it is as it was written. That it hold great credibility because of its internal consistency and survivability. And finally that the people, dates and events are confirmed by archaeology and supportive non-biblical accounts.