Well, there's not a lot of on-the-spot reporting from events 2,000 to 5,000 years ago, so much of what's in the Bible is as good as it gets. In both testaments, also, biblical material is supported by other texts (Egyptian records of the captivity of the Israelites, Roman records of the occupation of Judea).
I mean, if you're going to eliminate historical documents because they're written from a religious or culturally limited perspective, you're basically eliminating history itself (or at least history before, say, the mid-1700s).
Also, there's some pretty reliable dating of the four gospels placing their writing at between 70 and 125 CE (and records of church fathers debating their relative merits by 190 CE), so "hundreds of years after" isn't really accurate.
Whether or not these are records of widely believed myths or a biography of a real person is an open question. At the time, there wasn't really a distinction between the two.
This is probably a discussion best held elsewhere, though.
Worth pointing out, on topic: Gibson's main criticism from the Christian camp is that his film isn't actually biblical -- some of it is based on the visions of an 18th century mystic nun. Not scriptural at all. |
i guess i'm biased . 
