Biblical hoaxers usually proceed from the assumption that the Bible is a fake, produced by the Church in order to mislead people about the true Jesus. In occult and gnostic circles, this is an "of course" which is so obvious that no evidence is needed. But how can we know that they are wrong?
Practically all our knowledge about ancient history comes from manuscripts which have been copied one or more times. Originals in the actual hand of the author do not exist from any writers before the Renaissance. In assessing the trustworthiness of the copies we have, two criteria are especially important: the distance in time from the original (shorter time span = higher trust) and the number of preserved copies. The more copies we have, the better are our chances to compare them and see if the text has been altered in the copying process.
Most of the ancient books we know of -- the sources of accepted history -- are only preserved in a few copies and with great distance in time from the originals. The New Testament is actually the best documented, most trustworthy ancient writing that exists! Some examples for comparison:
| Writer | Original | Oldest copy | Time distance | Number of copies |
| Aristotle | 384-322 BC | 1100 AD | 1400 years | 5 |
| Herodotos | 480-425 BC | 900 AD | 1300 years | 8 |
| Plato | 427-347 BC | 900 AD | 1200 years | 7 |
| Caesar | 100-44 BC | 900 AD | 1000 years | 10 |
| New Testament | 50-90 AD | 120-350 AD* | 30-300 years | 5000 |
Old church documents tell how bishops had Bibles collected and examined by learned men. Manuscripts that contained errors were burned. This has caused occultists to allege that the church actively censored unwanted truths from the original biblical stories. Some also allege that the contents of the Bible was decided by a church Council in the 4th century, when all the true books were excluded.
They are wrong. Copying was often done in scriptoriums where one person read the original aloud, and several scribes simultaneously wrote down his words, so that many copies could be made at once. But the scribes did not always hear or understand correctly, and made errors. Sometimes critical ones like ommitting the "not" from "Thy shalt not kill"... Another and even more serious source of errors was Gnosticism. It was not a religion but rather a philosophy of religion, a sort of overriding view of everything -- a bit like Marxism in later times. Marxism explains everything in terms of economy and the "class struggle". Gnosticism similarly saw everything as a matter of attaining a "higher knowledge". Gnostics liked many aspects of Christianity, but did not understand that it contradicted their fundamental idea of "gnosis" (knowledge) as the way to salvation. They eagerly accepted Christ, but tried to transform him into a semi-divine teacher of "gnosis" instead of the crucified and resurrected Son of God.
When bishops had manuscripts examined and the bad ones burned, it was not an attempt to censor anything that had been there from the beginning. It was to get rid of writing errors, scribal additions to the text, and versions corrupted by the insertion of gnostic ideas.
No church council formally decided which books were to be part of the Bible. The formation of the Biblical canon was a process that happened over a long time, through correspondence between congregations and many local councils. It was largely finished at the end of the 2nd century. The lists of canonical books which can be found in the acts of the great (ecumenical) councils merely confirm a canon that already existed.
This is elementary. The Christian religion was founded by Jesus of Nazareth. We know that Gnosticism existed from at least 200 BC and that its ideas permeated the mediterranean world in the hellenistic era. Now suddenly there appears a new religion which is in sharp opposition to Gnosticism, namely Christianity. If Jesus was a gnostic, why would this new anti-gnostic religion bear his name? Where did these non-gnostic ideas come from, if not from the religion's founder? Why would there suddenly appear a non-gnostic movement centered on Jesus, if he was actually a Gnostic?
It is much more reasonable to believe that existing Gnostic philosophy tried to absorb Christianity and make it compatible with the (then) modern, Gnostic view of the world. The opposite belief, that there was a nasty conspiracy of priests who came from nowhere, got their ideas out of thin air, and devoted their lives to tell lies about a certain Gnostic thinker, makes no sense at all.