[papertyger]

“The early books of
the Old Testament weren’t even written down until several thousand years after
the events occurred, so they couldn’t be truly accurate accounts.”

Why?

[SuziQ]

After a couple of thousand years, the oral history isn't quite as accurate as it could be. I'm not saying the men who wrote down the Old Testament were not telling the truth, I'm just saying it's not a 'history', so much as a saga of the Jewish people as they're led to God,then fail to trust in Him and are taken into slavery a couple of times. After all this, God promises them a Messiah.

The Old Testament is the inspired Word of God, and we are to learn lessons from it, as God taught them through His interactions with His Chosen People. The New Testament is also inspired by God, but it's more contemporaneous, because it's written fairly soon after Jesus's Death, Resurrection, and Ascension, and the major parts are written by His Disciples, or men who were disciples of His Disciples, so there hadn't been a long passage of time before it was written.