The Bible is a big book, and justifying its reliability is a massive task. You’d have to have three PhDs to defend it really thoroughly. But, its reliability is central to Christian faith. So what’s to be done, if you’re asking whether Christianity is relevant for you, or if you’re trying to persuade someone that it is?
I’d suggest starting with the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – which are the record of Jesus’ sayings and actions while he was on this Earth, and of his resurrection. If they can be shown to be historical – recording faithfully the behaviour and words of a real person called Jesus – much of the Christian religion can be justified.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who have received their knowledge of the gospels from a cobbled together account of Dan Brown’s (The) Da Vinci Code together with the ramblings of some extreme, and usually ill-informed, well-known atheists.
So, here’s a very short introduction into the important topic, of whether we can trust the gospels as historically accurate – whether we can know Jesus said and did what the Bible says he said and did.