More than 100 years ago, historians began applying critical methods of documentary analysis to the Judaeo-Christian Bible. To scholars who had hoped to prove the Bible's authenticity, the results were traumatic.

One by one, the various books of the Bible were discovered to contain errors of fact, inaccurate guesses, rationalizations, prophecies ex post facto (usually combined with prophecies of the future that proved inaccurate), and unmistakable, deliberate lies. Such was the power of the churches that, despite the publication of thousands of scholarly books and articles refuting every...