Sources on Historical Reliability of the New Testament Unlike many of the other great religions of the world - Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, even Judaism to some extent - Christianity is founded not on a philosophy or a metaphysical idea, but on an historical event. 

According to Christianity, sometime around the year 0 a boy was born in the town of Bethlehem; sometime around the year 30 that same boy, now a man, started preaching, gathering disciples, healing and confronting the authorities that be. A few years later, those same authorities had him crucified. But a few days later he was seen alive by his disciples. After he returned to heaven these disciples travelled all over the known world, preaching this message - that the word has become flesh and has dwelt among us. A good number of them were killed before denying what they believed. 2000 years later, millions of people around the world still live lives, not just according to this man's teaching, but in some way 'in' him, and he in them too.

My question is very broad, but basically very simple. If Christianity is indeed based so firmly on real historical events, then surely there must have been significant scholarly work to discern the reliability of the New Testament cannon. Has this work been summarised in any books? Are there any objective (as far as that's possible) reviews of the historical reliability of the claims of the New Testament writings (particularly the Gospels and Paul's writings). Or possibly are there several complementing (should I say competing :) ) works that would give a balanced overview.

What frustrates me the most about this issue is the dichotomy of views. To take but one example, my good old NIV study bible says, concerning the authorship of 1 Timothy, that '...evidence is convincingly supportive of Paul's authorship' yet according to Wikipedia 'most modern scholars' hold that Paul was not the author.

As I said at the beginning, Christianity is in many ways unique in that the entire religion is firmly based on purported historical events. In light of the great range of opinions and views we hear on this issue, I want to spend some time looking at the new testament independently of my Christian bias. Any help (particularly recommended reading) would be greatly appreciated. Thankyou
If you mean events: much of the NT concerns small groups of average people. We would not expect independent validation, so any question of historic accuracy is limited to a single source (or, if you like, a few intertwined sources) (which has inbuilt bias, if evaluating from a clinical perspective). Simply: for much of NT I would expect simply: no one can say for certain, beyond faith.

The grave-openings in Matthew 27:52 are massively unreported, though; from a historic evidence perspective, that is something you might expect people to have noticed and reported, enough to be visible today.

Ultimately, we have only a fragmented set of documentary sources from the time period - the luck of whatever survived 2000 years (whether in original form, or via copying). There honestly isn't an awful lot of parallel evidence to look at (which says nothing about the accuracy of events, or not, other than to say: it is hard to know).

Additionally, any evidence or counter-evidence for any individual event does not prove or disprove any other events. For example, while there may be some independent mention of the crucifixion, that from an evidence basis says nothing about the resurrection.

Likewise, because it is written that something was witnessed by (say) 100 people, does not prove that this is the case; numbers (and events) can be subject to embellishment, so many of the events are, from an evidence perspective, not certain to be reliable.


  I want to spend some time looking at the new testament independently of my Christian bias


That simply does not exist, as such; the key sources are Christian, and it is perfectly well known that the documents selected for inclusion in what became The Bible were selected; among this selection, being "in line" with the dogma was a factor. Unless you mean something like a Jefferson Bible (and I don't think that is what you mean). This is obviously something that a lot of people have looked at lots of times, over lots of years. To date, I am honestly unaware of any compelling evidence that has not faced significant criticism, usually for uncertain logic, cherry-picking over the (scant) evidence, and making some fairly large assumptions (in particular with the motivation of characters or authors). 

If you are a believer, I suggest: base your beliefs on your faith.