Truth you can trace · the evidence
Why trust the Bible?
“How do I know the Bible is true?” is really several questions. Below are the main lines of evidence people bring to it and, because our promise is truth you can trace and not persuasion, the honest counter-case to each. Every claim is attributed and links back to a source you can open. We lay out the receipts and pick no verdict.
The lines of evidence
" is really several questions at once, is the text we have what was written? do its people, places and events turn up in the ground and in outside records? were its prophecies fulfilled? did the resurrection happen?
Luke 1:3 · John 20:31 · 2 Peter 1:16
ReadManuscripts: is the text what was written?
No original ("autograph") of any biblical book survives, as none survives for any ancient work. What survives are copies, and here the Bible is unusually well-attested.
Isaiah 40:8 · Matthew 24:35 · 2 Timothy 3:16
ReadArchaeology: does its world turn up in the ground?
Excavation has repeatedly turned up the named world of the Bible.
2 Samuel 7:16 · 2 Kings 20:20 · Ezra 1:1
ReadOutside witnesses: who else mentions its people?
Several non-Christian writers of the first two centuries mention Jesus, his followers, or the world of the Gospels. The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (writing c.1]), his works are held here complete.
Matthew 27:22 · Mark 6:17 · Acts 26:26
ReadFulfilled prophecy
The New Testament repeatedly presents Jesus as fulfilling Hebrew Scripture, and some of the correspondences are striking: the suffering servant "pierced for our transgressions" of Isaiah 53 (Berean Standard Bible)…
Isaiah 53:5 · Micah 5:2 · Psalms 22:18
ReadThe resurrection: the hinge claim
The resurrection is the claim everything else turns on, and it has a genuine historical core that even many skeptical historians grant.
1 Corinthians 15:3 · 1 Corinthians 15:4 · 1 Corinthians 15:6
ReadHow old is the earth, according to the Bible?
This question is asked so often it deserves its own note, and it is the sharpest test of the "state the fact, not the verdict" rule. The fact about the text.
Genesis 5:5 · Genesis 11:10 · Genesis 1:1
Read
Every major view is presented in its own terms and attributed; we pick no winner (that is our accuracy commitment). Sources include the public-domain 1915 International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, the historian Josephus, established archaeology attributed to its excavators, and the biblical text itself, synthesized in our own words. On the age of the earth we state what the Bible’s genealogies add up to (a fact about the text) and set every reading beside it; we never claim to settle how old the earth actually is.
7 lines of evidence, every one citing its sources. See our sources and licences.
On contested questions we show every major view, attributed and cited, and pick no winner. Answers are synthesized from primary sources, truth you can trace, not opinion.