The Historical Reliability of the New Testament

[robvalue]

If I picked up the bible, and I knew absolute nothing about it, I'd assume it was a fictional story book, vaguely based around some historic events.

Why should I think differently? Why I should I even think the intention of the authors is to be taken as non-fiction? Just because we don't know who they are, doesn't mean we can just decide for them why they wrote it. We can only speculate as to the real reasons. Even Christians would be sceptical about the accuracy and intentions of the authors if it were any other book involving gods.

I wish I could somehow set it up so that Christians could, for one day, lose all memory of anything to do with Christianity, and then present them with the bible. What would they make of it? Would they come to the conclusions they hold now, or would they dismiss it as fiction, delusion or propaganda? I'd bet a weeks worth of slop on the latter being almost always the case.