You do know that the Bible was written long before the discovery of the dead Sea scrolls right? And you know that the dead sea scrolls are virtually word for word of the writings assembled for the Bible right? Fact is there were thousands of historians and writers that spent the biggest portion of their lives recording accurate events and preserving them!
I liked reading from Josephus and he does get some things right. He was born almost 40 years after Jesus died. So, you must understand that he goes by what was told to him. So, with that being said, I will look more favorable to Matthew, Peter, John, Mark, and his brothers James and Jude who knew Jesus and even Paul who met Him on the road to Damascus, years later.
Where to start? The Israeli officials who refused to release the Dead Sea Scrolls for decades, and told researchers they would not come out in their lifetime finally relented after microfiche of them were secreted out and shared in an effort largely initiated by Eisenman. They were originally dated at 200 BC (Before Christ) and considered to be concerned about the Maccabeans and their slaughter by the original Herod family. It was only recently where researchers have correlated them with Essene activity from about 50 years BC to some time just beyond the Roman destruction of the Temple. With scholars now relating commonly described figures as John the Baptist, Jesus, James and Paul (the latter not in a good way.)
Most of the New Testament was written AFTER the destruction of the Temple and the Romans slaughter and dispersal of the Jews from Israel, including Jesus’ original followers. Tradition holds that some may have gotten to Pella just before. But their movement was thwarted and finally outlawed by the gentile Christians who followed. The Gospels and almost all that followed were written by Gentiles, for Gentiles, who carefully avoided blaming the ruling Romans of all their murderous destruction, but lay blame squarely on the Jews. And so they took their lead from Paul (Saulus) who clearly alerts us in his letters that he is completely at odds with Jesus’ hand picked Apostles.
Paul most clearly reports his disagreement with Peter and Barnabas after they headed to Antioch after the meeting in Jerusalem where James decided that Paul could proselytize uncircumcised gentiles provided they follow other Jewish law. Acts leaves out the dietary restrictions that early Church historians had other documents to inform us of. (Eat nothing that bleeds, that is strangled, that has hoofs. Mainly just fish and vegetables.) Paul records his huge fight with Peter over this and how Peter and Barnabas part ways with him. Acts, instead, has this weird scene of Peter having a dream of meats raining down from the heavens. Acts/Luke is totally Gentile Paul oriented. So much so that it later goes out of its way to slander Queen Helen and her sons, who we know from Josephus as spending their fortune to buy grain from Egypt to feed the population during a great famine. Acts calls her the Queen of Sheba and replaces her sons with a Eunuch. This in response to Paul’s hostility toward circumcision, while Helen and her sons were converted to a “different” kind of Judaism (ie. Jesus’ assembly, led by James) with her sons agreeing to be circumcised. Josephus admits to the sons great heroism fighting against the Romans, and losing their lives, in the first phase of the Great War. Acts instead tells a confused story of Paul sending Phillip down South on the Gaza road, but somehow ending north ins Caesarea to buy the grain, which, again, sucks up to the Romans as somehow saving the people they would soon slaughter.
But I’ll give this to Paul and Acts. If not for them, you would have no idea that James, the brother of Jesus, was head of a thriving assembly of Jesus followers, nor would you discover that his stoning at the hands of the High Priest Ananus, causing the uprising within the Jewish population, leading to the conflict with Rome that would end up with the slaughter and dispersal of all Jerusalem Jews and the destruction of the Temple. This happened before the Gospels were written and all other materials, save Paul and James’ letters. But you get it from Josephus, who was born after Jesus’ death, but was old enough to fight in the War with Rome and manage to make connections when he was captured that allowed his survival long enough to write a history of the war and everything relevant of the Jewish history of the century prior. Little of which you get from the New Testament.
I think that a lot of Paul’s preaching is beautiful, but he admits he was at odds with Jesus’ hand picked Apostles. The one’s who followed Him before He was crucified. The most precious material we find in the New Testament, outside of James’ letter, are the parables, sayings and the one Sermon that was preserved of Christ. Just about every scholar agrees that there were early documents of Jesus’ sayings, we call Q, that are lost to us now, outside of the Gospel of Thomas, which was likely altered by Gnostics. We also have some Jewish followers of Jesus material written after the War, that was rejected by the Gentiles, ie. The Recognitions, etc.