IS THE BIBLE A HISTORICALLY-RELIABLE DOCUMENT? [2 of 2] The second test is the “Internal (Eyewitness) Test," which considers the credibility of the authors and the truthfulness of what was written. Those collaborators for the Bible did not compile it willy nilly. Instead, they asked logical qualifying questions like whether the author of a potential book to be included was an apostle of Christ (spent a lot of time with Jesus), whether a book agreed with the rest of Scripture (God does not lie or contradict Himself), had the book been accepted by the early Church (they were there at the beginning), and had it been quoted by the early Church (to have used it, they must have believed the quote was from God). ; Sir David Dalrymple gathered together the early Church fathers' letters, from which he said he was able to reconstruct the entire New Testament using just quotations (except for only seven verses). An added qualifier they used was whether a book came with the power of God. There is something about reading the one-and-only Bible that just comes up and hits you in the eyes with the power of God. You can't get that from something whipped up by man. So, those are some very effective filters used to give us the Bible through a process that was the opposite of careless, casual, or haphazard. The third test is the “External Test,” which includes historical events, geography, archaeology, and cultural consistencies; all of which have verified the Bible’s veracity.