Some people see the Bible as historically inaccurate and think that much of his content has been fabricated by church leaders over time in order to gain and maintain power. Much of this thinking has been influenced by contemporary fictional books such as The Da Vinci Code.
However, there are several good reasons why the Gospel accounts should be considered historically reliable rather than legends. These can be very briefly summarised as the following:
The timing is far too early for the Gospels to be legends
The canonical Gospel were written at the very most forty to sixty years after Jesus' death. Paul's letters, written just fifteen to twenty-five years after the death of Jesus, provide an outline of all the events of Jesus' life found in the Gospels. It is not only Christ's supporters who were still alive but also many bystanders, officials and opponents who had actually heard him teach, seen his actions and watched him die. For a highly altered, fictionalised account of an event to take hold in the public imagination it is necessary that the eyewitnesses (and their children and grandchildren) all be long dead. The Gospels were written far too soon for this to occur.
The content is far too counterproductive for the Gospels to be legends
Why would the leaders of the early Christian movement have made up the story of the crucifixion of it didn't happen? Why would any Christian make up the account of Jesus asking God in the garden of Gethsemane if he could get out of his mission? Why show in multiple instances how the disciples doubted Jesus? Why invent women as the first witnesses of the resurrection in a society where women were assigned such low status that their testimony was not admissible evidence in court?
The literary form of the Gospels is too detailed to be legend
In modern novels, details are added to create the aura of realism, but that was never the case in ancient fiction. The amount of detail in the Gospels that often are unnecessary to the main plot, hence indicate that the text is not fiction. If a modern day person was making up a story about Jesus he or she would include additional and often unnecessary details just to fill out the story's air of realism. But that kind of fictional writing was unknown in the first century.
If you like to listen to listen to some more free material, then a brilliant audio talk about the topic in mp3 format carried out by Mark Dever can be downloaded here: http://www.thisisnext.org/audio/dl_dialog.php?filename=na-2008/02%20The%20Authority%20of%20Scripture.mp3
Moreover, Tim Keller's excellent and comprehensive series is available for free here: http://thereasonforgod.com/media.php
Based on: Keller, T. (2008). The Reason For God. p.97-114
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