People began to question it, trying to find inconsistencies or historical unreliability. Christians have responded to this flow of criticism in two ways. One was to treat the unbelievable places in the Bible as allegory. The other one was to try to search out whether it was true indeed, with science.
The first approach gave rise to a new branch of theology, the liberal theology. I could understand the reason for the rise of such an approach. All of a sudden, came a tsunami of criticism towards the Bible. Everywhere, scholars began to raise questions Christians couldn't answer. In a world where science and reason were gaining more and more authority, you couldn't just say that some book written 1700 years ago should be considered infallible just because it has been considered so before. People would look at the unreasonable events in the Bible and laugh at them. So Christians began to say, "Ok, for the sake of retaining people in the church, why not just take this one place in the Bible and say it has an allegorical meaning to it." After all, Bible does use allegories, right? I don't know if that is what happened exactly, but I would imagine that is what was happening. There was a drawback to that approach, however. Christians taking this approach, gradually started perceiving the Bible as a good, but... partly fictional book. If you have to doubt some places of the Bible, why should you trust the rest of the Bible? This approach leads to a church that isn't sure in what it believes in. And in the long term, they stop believing altogether, and stop going to church too.
The other approach was to try and use science to prove that the different events in the Bible did really happen, and that the people in the Bible were real historical characters. That approach seems to be a more proactive approach than the first one. Rather than been hammered out of existence by science, these Christians began to use the scientific method to really search out the facts and be ready to provide an answer to anyone who might ask. I've heard numerous testimonies from scientifically inclined people who became Christian because it was the only religion that could withstand scientific scrutiny. It's a constant battle though; because to some people, claiming scientific inaccuracy of the Bible is just a cover for not really wanting to believe it. It takes a simple statement to raise a doubt in the Bible. It might take decades to try and defend the Bible against that statement. But what always seems to be happening, is that after such statements are researched, Bible gets another scientific proof. However, another question arises: do we need to prove every word of the Bible scientifically?
There was a documentary I watched once. It was a documentary on the newly discovered, phenomenal properties of water. Scientists doing research in this field believe there is more to water than just two atoms of Hydrogen and one atom of Oxygen. Water seems to react to its surroundings, seems to respond to what it hears. Looking at this new behaviour of water, they looked back at some of the events of the Bible and could understand how they might have happened. For example, they discovered that if you really, really purify the water, it changes structure in such a way that it becomes hard enough to walk on. Then they looked at the passage in the Bible where it says that Jesus walked on water, and said, "Hey, that could've happened." Maybe he had power over the structure of the water molecules to make it hard enough to walk on. They also found out that the miracles of turning water into wine could be reproduced too, by altering the structure of water molecules. They also did tests where depending on what words were spoken to the water, it could either become good for drinking or poisonous. They tried saying the words used in prayer and discovered that they have just the correct tone and pitch to change the structure of water molecules, that it becomes good for drinking, even if it was poisonous initially. Then they remembered that the Bible advises to pray before eating; and that if you do, even if someone gives you poison to eat, you would not be harmed.
What are some of the thoughts that come to your mind when you were reading the above paragraph? Well, it was either, "Wow, this is fascinating! The Bible really is true!" Or, it could've been, "This stuff is just ridiculous! How could people making such statements be called scientists!" Or, it could've been, "So, this stuff isn't that hard, Jesus wasn't that much of a miracle maker, He just knew those tricks."
That third reaction scenario is the drawback of trying to prove everything in the Bible scientifically. Before watching this documentary, it didn't matter how I prayed over food. I was praying to God so He would do something to bless the food. After watching the documentary, I'm noticing that I tend to put ALL of the food I'll be eating before me, and trying to say the words out loud, and trying to speak the RIGHT words onto the food. And then I catch myself, "Wait, isn't God supposed to be blessing this food, and not the correct words?"
There is a reason why all of those miracles are written in the Bible. They are there to teach us one important principle; that the God we believe in is a supernatural God, that we believe in a God who can do miracles, who can do unbelievable things in our lives. As I read the Bible, I'm noticing that God never had a problem with people who initially doubt. He never had a problem with providing a proof for people to believe something (remember Gideon and the fur skins?) You don't have to believe a religion blindly. That could be fatal. There are thousands of religions out there, should you just PICK a religion to believe in? Or maybe have some sense and try researching stuff before you get into something?
God will provide all the proof you need to believe IN Him. But you can't get through life solely on reason. Sometimes you just need to trust someone. We do it all the time. If we did not believe anything, we would not buy anything, we would not join any social circles, we would not be living with a family. Sometimes we could not understand where God is leading us, because it defies all of our personal conventions of wisdom. But when we trust God to lead us even when we don't understand something, we realize that He is much far-sighted than us; and that were He brought us, is much better than where our personal intellect would have brought us.
So, go ahead and question the Bible, go ahead and research if its true. But as we get one proof after another, at some point, we just need to trust it. Scientific theories will come and go. Doubting statements will be invented and answered. But at a certain point, we just begin to have enough evidence to just trust the Bible, rather than being swayed into doubt by every single careless statement thrown out against it.