Why do Christians trust the Bible?

[Aractus]

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We don't have proof, we have something called evidence. Why do you think scholars use the term "Biblical Mount Sinai"? I'll give you a hint: because they acknowledge that Moses and the Israelites never went to Mt. Sinai!

The problem you have is in numbers. In the 15th-13th centuries BC, around the time when the exodus was supposed to have occurred, the population of Egypt was around 3.5 million at its height. The bible claims, several times, that 600,000 men aged from 20 left Egypt with their families - that would total around 2-3 million Jews leaving Egypt all at one time. That means they actually outnumbered the Egyptians. So therefore if they outnumbered the Egyptians - and we have hundreds (and probably thousands) of separate Egyptian writings on clay, pottery and stone that have survived from those centuries, where are the ones from the ancient Jews in those centuries (written in any language)? There aren't any! How can that possibly be?

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Okay, so you mean this:

• Joshua conquers Jericho. “Joshua said to the people, ‘Shout, for the Lord has given you the city. And the city and all that is within it shall be devoted to the Lord for destruction. … But all silver and gold, and every vessel of bronze and iron, are holy to Jehovah; they shall go into the treasury of Jehovah.’ … Then they devoted all in the city to destruction, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys, with the edge of the sword.” (6:16-17, 19, 21).
  
• Joshua conquers Ai. “Jehovah said to Joshua, ‘… you shall do to Ai and its king as you did to Jericho and its king. Only its spoil and its livestock you shall take as plunder for yourselves. Lay an ambush against the city, behind it.’ … And the men in the ambush rose quickly out of their place, and as soon as he had stretched out his hand, they ran and entered the city and captured it. And they hurried to set the city on fire. … And when Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had captured the city, … then they turned back and struck down the men of Ai. And the others came out from the city against them, so they were in the midst of Israel, some on this side, and some on that side. And Israel struck them down, until there was left none that survived or escaped. … And all who fell that day, both men and women, were 12,000, all the people of Ai.” (8:1-2, 19, 21-22, 25).
  
• Joshua makes the sun and moon stand still while he finishes slaughtering the Ai civilians ...“Joshua spoke to Jehovah …, and he said in the sight of Israel,
  “‘Sun, stand still at Gibeon,
  and moon, in the Valley of Aijalon.’
  “And the sun stood still, and the moon stopped,
  until the nation took vengeance on their enemies.
  “Is this not written in the Book of Jashar? The sun stopped in the midst of heaven and did not hurry to set for about a whole day. There has been no day like it before or since, when the Lord heeded the voice of a man, for the Lord fought for Israel.” (10:12-14).
  ** “it happened that the day was lengthened that the night not come on too soon, and be an obstruction to the zeal of the Hebrews in pursuing their enemies” - (Flavius Josephus - Ant., 5.61).
  
• Joshua kills the Amorite Kings and takes Makkedah. “Then Joshua said, ‘Open the mouth of the cave and bring those five kings out to me from the cave.’ And they did so, and brought those five kings out to him from the cave, the king of Jerusalem, the king of Hebron, the king of Jarmuth, the king of Lachish, and the king of Eglon. … Joshua struck them and put them to death, and he hanged them on five trees. And they hung on the trees until evening. But at the time of the going down of the sun, Joshua commanded, and they took them down from the trees and threw them into the cave where they had hidden themselves, and they set large stones against the mouth of the cave, which remain to this very day.
  “As for Makkedah, Joshua captured it on that day and struck it, and its king, with the edge of the sword. He devoted to destruction every person in it; he left none remaining. And he did to the king of Makkedah just as he had done to the king of Jericho.” (10:22-23, 26-28).
  
• Joshua takes Southern Canaan. “Then Joshua and all Israel with him passed on from Makkedah to Libnah and fought against Libnah. And the Lord gave it also and its king into the hand of Israel. And he struck it with the edge of the sword, and every person in it; he left none remaining in it. And he did to its king as he had done to the king of Jericho.
  “Then Joshua and all Israel with him passed on from Libnah to Lachish and laid siege to it and fought against it. And the Lord gave Lachish into the hand of Israel, and he captured it on the second day and struck it with the edge of the sword, and every person in it, as he had done to Libnah.
  “Then Horam king of Gezer came up to help Lachish. And Joshua struck him and his people, until he left none remaining.
  “Then Joshua and all Israel with him passed on from Lachish to Eglon. And they laid siege to it and fought against it. And they captured it on that day, and struck it with the edge of the sword. And he devoted every person in it to destruction that day, as he had done to Lachish.
  “Then Joshua and all Israel with him went up from Eglon to Hebron. And they fought against it and captured it and struck it with the edge of the sword, and its king and its towns, and every person in it. He left none remaining, as he had done to Eglon, and devoted it to destruction and every person in it.
  “Then Joshua and all Israel with him turned back to Debir and fought against it and he captured it with its king and all its towns. And they struck them with the edge of the sword and devoted to destruction every person in it; he left none remaining. Just as he had done to Hebron and to Libnah and its king, so he did to Debir and to its king.
  “So Joshua struck the whole land, the hill country and the Negeb and the lowland and the slopes, and all their kings. He left none remaining, but devoted to destruction all that breathed, just as Jehovah the God of Israel commanded.” (10:29-40).
  
• Joshua takes Northern Canaan. “When Jabin, king of Hazor, heard of this, he sent to Jobab king of Madon, and to the king of Shimron, and to the king of Achshaph, and to the kings who were in the northern hill country, and in the Arabah south of Chinneroth, and in the lowland, and in Naphoth-dor on the west, to the Canaanites in the east and the west, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, and the Jebusites in the hill country, and the Hivites under Hermon in the land of Mizpah. And they came out with all their troops, a great horde, in number like the sand that is on the seashore, with very many horses and chariots. .. So Joshua and all his warriors came suddenly against them by the waters of Merom and fell upon them. And Jehovah gave them into the hand of Israel, who struck them and chased them as far as Great Sidon and Misrephoth-maim, and eastwards as far as the Valley of Mizpeh. And they struck them until he left none remaining. …
  “And Joshua turned back at that time and captured Hazor and struck its king with the sword, for Hazor formerly was the head of all those kingdoms. And they struck with the sword all who were in it, devoting them to destruction; there was none left that breathed. And he burned Hazor with fire. And all the cities of those kings, and all their kings, Joshua captured, and struck them with the edge of the sword, devoting them to destruction, just as Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded. …
  “For it was the Jehovah’s doing to harden their hearts that they should come against Israel in battle, in order that they should be devoted to destruction and should receive no mercy but be destroyed, just as the Jehovah commanded Moses.
  “And Joshua came at that time and cut off the Anakim from the hill country, from Hebron, from Debir, from Anab, and from all the hill country of Judah, and from all the hill country of Israel. Joshua devoted them to destruction with their cities. There was none of the Anakim left in the land of the people of Israel. Only in Gaza, in Gath, and in Ashdod did some remain. So Joshua took the whole land, according to all that the Lord had spoken to Moses. And Joshua gave it for an inheritance to Israel according to their tribal allotments. And the land had rest from war.” (11:1-4, 7-8, 10-12, 20-23).

Whew. That's what you're claiming is real tangible history?

Here's your first problem: The destruction of Jericho dates (radiocarbon dating of organic material) to 17th-16th century BC, well before the exodus is meant to have occurred.

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I didn't mean it that way. I made it clear that I had nothing to argue about there. I just said that a narrative like structure was very limited in the pentateuch. Starting from Joshua, there isn't any law-giving., just historical type narratives. We don't have to argue on EVERYTHING

Well that's not the Orthodox teaching at all - in fact it's not the teaching of any Christian faith that I know of that the exodus and conquest of Canaan are not historical events.

Ps- I don't treat the bible as the word of god. Maybe exodus never happened and the hebrews just went to fight against their neighbours for petty reasons. I'm not going to imply anything affirmatively before the new testament

Again, that's not the Orthodox teaching at all.

Listen to this:

• Okay, Kevin. This is, of course, a very common question. The short answer is that we use the Septuagint because the Septuagint was the Scripture of the early Church. The Jews, of course, standardized their Bible much later than [that,] quite a long time after the start of Christianity. The Protestants follow the Jewish tradition because Martin Luther, when he started the Protestant Reformation, believed that they should follow the Jewish tradition because if the Old Testament is supposed to be the Hebrew scriptures, then really we should be following what the Hebrews have that’s in the canon and the text. But remember the Protestant Reformation was a rejection of the Catholic Church and of the traditions of the ancient Church.
  
  So people who want to be the closest to what the Church was doing in the early Church should not be really looking at the Hebrew text, but looking at the Septuagint, because far more Jews were speaking Greek and using the Septuagint at the time of the early Church than were using Hebrew. There were millions of Jews in what we call diaspora. We call them Hellenized Jews or Hellenistic Jews. These were Jews who did not know Hebrew. The Jews who used and knew Hebrew were the ones who were living in Judea and maybe Galilee, and those [were] of [a] small minority of Jews in the world. Philo of Alexandria says that there were one million Jews in Alexandria, Egypt. That’s probably an exaggerated number, but there were millions of Jews throughout the Roman Empire—in Babylon, especially in Asia Minor, and Egypt, in Greece, in Rome—and those people used the Septuagint.
  
  That’s why when Christianity began, it began in the Jewish synagogues, and those people were using the Septuagint, so the Church simply continued that practice.
  
  Dr Jeannie Constantinou (an Orthodox theologian)

It's all untrue - every single part of it. The LXX didn't even exist at the time of Jesus. There were a number of competing Greek translations done in the mid-late 2nd century A.D. proving the widespread use of the Hebrew scriptures at the time by the early Christians. It also proves the LXX wasn't completed until this time otherwise why was there a need to do more translations from Hebrew? It can be proved that some of the N.T. authors were only familiar with the proto-MT text and never used the proto-LXX. There's no record of the Jews ever using a translation in the Synagogues. Both Jesus and Josephus are only familiar with the Hebrew version scriptures (proven for Jesus because he talks about the "Law and Prophets" and the "Law, Prophets and Writings" - the LXX is separated into four sections not three. Josephus writes that the scriptures are on 22 scrolls - that's how the Hebrew scriptures were written and there's no record of a Greek version ever being arranged that way - how could it be when the books are reordered? In the third century Origen modified it extensively.

Not a single complete ancient Greek manuscript of the LXX exists anywhere, not one, and the book of Daniel only exists in ONE (completely) and a recently discovered second manuscript (partially). It (ie Codex Chisianus) dates to the NINTH century. Therefore the complete LXX that exists today dates to the 9th century, and the complete Hebrew scriptures that exist to day date to the early 11th century. Dating the LXX to any other time is a LIE. How can you justify dating the LXX one way and the Hebrew another way? That's absolute rubbish. It may have had some of its antiquity in the 2nd century BC (which I doubt). The oldest manuscripts that exist today date from the 4th century - well the oldest Hebrew manuscripts that exist today date from the 2nd century BC! The pattern should be clear - everything the Orthodox scholar above says about the LXX has been disproved, is dishonest, and above all show absolute religious blindness when it comes to this.

Furthermore, the DSS agree with the Lennigard Codex 95% of the time (most of that last 5% is meaningless differentiations). To my knowledge no part of the MT has been shown to be a later addition, whereas much of the LXX is an addition to the Hebrew text.