[jluetjen]

Yes, but Paul's Epistles (for example his first letter to the Corinthians) was written about 57 AD, and it and the other Pauline Epistles effectively record the historical beliefs (and non-beliefs in some cases) of the eary Christians. I'm not saying that you have to take everything that Paul says as dogma, but you can also read what he is responding to in the different congregations and other details.

You know, I can still ask my Dad about things that happened to him during WWII, and he has very clear memories of names, places and activities -- even after 60 years! Why would you expect anything less then that of the people 2000 years ago?

Besides, you can just start out by assuming that the 1930 year old documents about things that happened 1970 years ago are inaccurate. But if you assume that, how are you going to find more accurate information??? Make it up? Real Historians and Archeologist will take the document at face value, and then compare it up to other documents from same era. Are they consistent? How? Are they inconsistent? How? Oh wait, the other documents (the Gospels, Acts, other Epistles) are consistent, but you don't want to believe them -- so then what do you have????