The bible... why take it seriously?

[Michael]

My point is, how can this book be considered any kind of good evidence when you have to rely on other people telling you it is true, without then providing any further evidence?

I think that's the role for historians of scripture and of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Just as a small example, Prof. Richard Bauckham did work on the names used in the Gospels and compared them with accumulated data on names of Palestinian Jews of that time period. He found the frequency of names in the Gospels and in the wider data on Palestinian Jews matched well, providing evidence that the authors appeared to have had local knowledge of 1st century Palestine (giving lie, for example, to the wilder theories that the Gospels were written by 2nd century Romans). At the same time though we can acknowledge that scripture is also telling stories; the narrative is a pedagogic one, and not necessarily always a literal retelling of history (the different Gospel writers, for example, appear to order events differently to match the revelation that they unfold for us).

Yet, for me, my trust in scripture has been developed largely through an existential approach. What happens in our lives when we trust in the message of Jesus? What happens when we spend time in prayer with the God of the bible?

I very much doubt any one can ever prove what is literal history in the bible, and what is a pedagogic gloss. The 'Jesus Seminar' of the 80s and 90s tried to work our which bits of dialogue were actually said by Jesus and which were words put into the mouth of Jesus by the Evangelists, but, to me, that misses the point. Faith, for me, will always entail some risk, but I am personally happy that taking that risk has led me to living a better life than avoiding that risk.

That's obviously just a personal view of things.