Why believe the bible?

[RoadRunner79]

And how can we be sure that what they witnessed was properly recorded? Even in modern society witness testimonial is quite unreliable, yet alone scientific ignorant people living in the bronze age. Or it might have been completely fabricated and packaged along with the claim in order to make it more believable. Fact is, we just don't know. What do we know though is nowhere else outside of the Bible are any of the magic that is claimed to have happened actually recorded.

Something outside the Bible? Okay. There were dozens of churches in dozens of cities across the Roman empire within 20 years of Jesus. They all believed the same thing that later appeared in the Gospels. Evidence for these churches are in first and second century docs like these. The mention of these churches in Acts and the Epistles complete a nice loop.

Fact is, we do know way more that you think. Demanding that we have non-religious-related docs is nonsense. 99.9% of all docs from the first century are gone. It is only docs that people cared about that were painstakingly preserved and copied on materials that had expiration dates.

We can confirm a lot from writings outside of the Bible about the early beliefs of Christians, what was known of Jesus, and the early practices of the Church

http://coldcasechristianity.com/2017/is-...the-bible/

Let’s review what we’ve learned from hostile pagan and Jewish sources describing Jesus. We’ll do our best to discount the anti-Christian bias we see in the sources, just as we discounted the pro-Christian bias we think might exist in some versions of the writing of Josephus. Many elements of the Biblical record are confirmed by these hostile accounts, in spite of the fact they deny the supernatural power of Jesus:

Jesus was born and lived in Palestine. He was born, supposedly, to a virgin and had an earthly father who was a carpenter. He was a teacher who taught that through repentance and belief, all followers would become brothers and sisters. He led the Jews away from their beliefs. He was a wise man who claimed to be God and the Messiah. He had unusual magical powers and performed miraculous deeds. He healed the lame. He accurately predicted the future. He was persecuted by the Jews for what He said, betrayed by Judah Iskarioto. He was beaten with rods, forced to drink vinegar and wear a crown of thorns. He was crucified on the eve of the Passover and this crucifixion occurred under the direction of Pontius Pilate, during the time of Tiberius. On the day of His crucifixion, the sky grew dark and there was an earthquake. Afterward, He was buried in a tomb and the tomb was later found to be empty. He appeared to His disciples resurrected from the grave and showed them His wounds. These disciples then told others Jesus was resurrected and ascended into heaven. Jesus’ disciples and followers upheld a high moral code. One of them was named Matthai. The disciples were also persecuted for their faith but were martyred without changing their claims. They met regularly to worship Jesus, even after His death.

These where not witnesses to these events, but they do confirm (from a non-friendly) point of view a number of things that where known about Jesus fairly early.  They confirm the Gospel and that Jesus was known as a healer and miracle worker.