Myth, History, and the New Testament

An interesting fact about many "mythical" accounts from the ancient world is that they don't normally provide any details, and they certainly don't provide dates and times that have been confirmed by archaeology. Let's take, for example, the Book of Acts, which contains numerous miracle claims. It not only contains miracle claims, it also has all sorts of information about local governments that brought Paul up on trial. And guess what. Archaeology has supported the Book of Acts every time. So whoever wrote that book knew exactly what the local governments in these cities consisted in. 

Now, I live in Glendale, and I know they have a mayor and a city council of three. But what about Peoria, Avondale, Surprise, El Mirage, and Goodyear? I have no idea how many people are in their council. I can Google it and find out, but whoever wrote Acts had no Google. So how did he know all of this? That's something people would normally know only if they actually appeared before all these councils. 

Now it is possible to do a bunch of research so that you can, for example, put all sorts of accurate detail into a fictional account. But ancient people didn't  do that sort of thing. They didn't mix fact and fiction the way they do in a present-day historical novel. If they were writing legends they didn't make it look to fact-checkers as if it fit with reality. So I think there are some real difficulties in the secular story that are not easy to explain. But if any non-miraculous account has to be better than a miraculous one, then I suppose there couldn't be enough evidence.

Here is a comparison between the story of Jesus and the story of Apollonius of Tyana.