Before there was ever a New Testament there were already Christians. They saw the risen Jesus themselves and then later they wrote it down. You can become a Christian without even knowing what the Bible says. As long as you know that Jesus rose from the dead, and as long as you know that He died for your sins, it’s very easy to become a Christian.
Paul says all you need to do is confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that Jesus rose from the dead, and you will be saved. Period. So before the Bible ever even existed, Christianity was already true. Now it is true that the New Testament helps us understand what Christianity is all about, and because we have the New Testament we can order our lives according to it.
But my point is, even if you find what you consider to be an error in the New Testament, that doesn’t negate the truth of Christianity. There are other ways of verifying that Jesus rose from the dead besides words written on a page. The explosion of the early church out of Jerusalem is an example. That wouldn’t have happened unless something extraordinary had happened. Especially in a group that had nothing to gain by saying Jesus rose from the dead. And they went on and got beaten, tortured, and killed for saying it.
It could’ve been easily refuted if the Jews and the Romans had simply gone to the tomb and pulled out the dead body of Jesus. Christianity would’ve been over. But they didn’t ~ because they couldn’t. But it persisted and turned the world around in its first nearly 300 years, through peaceful means.
