This argument comes in many shapes and sizes:

The Bible is just a collection of stories. The Bible is man made. The Bible is good literature, but isn’t true. The Bible has too many problems to be taken literally. We don’t have the original Bible, so we can’t trust it.

How to Respond

The Bible is the most reliable document that has ever been written. The historical record of the Bible far outstrips any other ancient manuscript and puts other religious documents to shame. The earliest surviving copies of the Bible are from just a few dozen years after Jesus’ ministry, death, and resurrection. These manuscripts come from all over the region, showing that the original documents were carefully copied and distributed throughout the known world. No historian or anthropologist doubts the authenticity of these ancient manuscripts. The thousands of surviving manuscripts show the careful work that was done to consistently reproduce the original versions.

If you look outside the Bible and its manuscripts, historical and archaeological evidence has verified many important and obscure aspects of the Bible.