First of all the old testament in the Christian Bible is essentially the records as kept by the Jews of the history of their religion.

Now Andrew Grygus thinks that large parts of what is recorded in those records is altered and made up after the fact. This is a claim that I personally have little opinion on, given that I have not studied it.

But whether or not the Old Testament is an accurate record of events, it is definitely a record of events. And it is a record which is taken seriously by Jews, Christians, and Muslims. (Though a basic claim of Islam is that the record has been altered through history. Only some Jews and Christians believe this.) Furthermore whether or not I happen to believe that the record is accurate is irrelevant to the fact that many Jews and Christians believe it to be accurate.

In particular many Jews claim that the atrocities recorded in the Old Testament happened essentially as documented in their own religious writings, and current geopolitical claims made by many in Israel depend upon the claim that their ancestors committed genocide. Furthermore it is an item of faith for many millions of people that those acts of genocide were ordered by God, and were therefore good things for the Jews to have done.

Now the statement of mine that you may be confused over is that the Christian New Testament is based on an authorized selection of eyewitness reports that were written down at some remove to the events described. Being eyewitness reports, there are internal contradictions of a kind to be found in eyewitness reports from all days. And I personally place no more or less weight on the eyewitness reports that make up the foundations of Christianity than I do the eyewitness reports from any other small religious sect.

Those are statements which fit perfectly with what is known of the history of the Bible. The statements of fact are universally accepted among religious scholars. However they are statements which a significant portion of the US public takes exception to. (Something like 40% of the US believe that the Bible is inerrant.) Hence the controversy, even though I, for instance, do not have any reason to dispute that there was a man whose name was approximately Jesus Christ (I doubt we have kept the Aramic pronounciation) who was a religious leader put to death, most probably through crucifixion.

But anyways, that is neither here nor there. For one thing it is a claim about the New Testament, not the Old. For another my statement was about current beliefs about events as recorded in the OT, and so the question of whether or not those events in fact happened is completely irrelevant.

Cheers,
Ben