Hi, Anonymous —

Thanks for your question.

Briefly, we trust the Bible because of how it was transmitted to us. We have a Bible because of the Catholic Church which was founded on the Apostles. The Apostles were all eye witnesses to the life of Christ. They also saw him after the Resurrection. All but one of them were put to death because they refused to deny what they saw.

So follow the logic: It's difficult enough to get someone to die for the truth, let alone, someone who is willing to die and be tortured for what they know to be a lie. The witnesses to Christ's life and Resurrection are reliable and believable. These same witnesses were entrusted with all the teachings of Christ which included what the Old Testament was. Of course, many of these witnesses or their followers wrote the New Testament.

We also know that those writings are true because they come from multiple sources and are harmonious. There are no doctrinal contradictions when understood within the context of the Tradition that was handed down from the beginning. Tradition is self-correcting by the community itself.

So for instance, when others tried to write texts and claim that they should be considered Scripture, the community or the Church, could weigh those texts against the Tradition which had been handed down to them from Christ.

John