The Bible is the most historically trustworthy collection of documents from ancient history. People who are willing to dismiss the Bible as mythology, would have to do the same thing with all of ancient books. Bibles came from Catholic tradition since Jesus did not give a directive to prepare a Bible, and the apostles and early disciples never even knew there would ever be a Bible. Having Bibles –and which books to include– came from Sacred Tradition and the Magisterium of the Catholic Church. For more than 300 years after the Resurrection of Jesus, there was no Bible. There were dozens of inspired writings (or books) that may have been used in Christian liturgies (i.e. Catholic Masses), which could have been included in the Canon of Scripture. (The Bible Alone theory was not even possible for more than 300 years because the Bible did not exist.) The list of books were debated and approved by Councils of Catholic Bishops including the Council of Rome (382 A.D.), Council of Hippo (393 A.D.), and Council of Carthage (397 A.D.).
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Some Christian leaders removed 7 books from the Bible during the Protestant Reformation in the 1600s, because elements of these books disagreed with the newly devised teachings of the Reformers. As proof of this, there are no copies of Christian Bibles before the Reformation that did not have these 7 books in them (Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), Baruch, and 1 and 2 Maccabees). You cannot remove books from the Bible and still have the fullness of truth.
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Some people say Catholics added these books but it is not so. They were always there starting in the 300s when the first Bibles were assembled and approved by councils of Catholic bishops. Copies of the Bibles exist from the 300s and other centuries up to the Reformation, and until now, and all these books have always been in the Catholic Bibles. It is a huge contradiction that most Protestants accept the other books of the New Testament as approved by the Tradition of the Catholic Church and Councils of Catholic bishops, but then say they live by the Bible Alone (Sola Scriptura) and not by Sacred Tradition. If it were not for the Catholic Church, there would be no Bible and no Christianity. (In the 300s, the persecution of Christianity ended and this is another reason the first Bibles were copied by hand primarily by monks in monasteries.)
Compared to all other ancient documents, the New Testament is many times more reliable and more sure because there are in existence today more than 500 early handwritten copies. (Handwriting copies was the standard way of producing written documents during early Christianity.)
Posted by John Beutler, January 15, 2018