The term historicity refers to whether something reported is true in history. In modern times the historicity of the whole of the Bible has been brought into question and denied by many. The real question behind this issue is the question of why people believe that anything in particular is true and not false.
That people believe what they want to believe is shown clearly by the practice of idolatry. That people can just as easily disbelieve what they want to disbelieve is shown clearly by the phenomena of Holocaust denial.
The supposed authority of science and scholarship is a movable foundation of sand for building any possible certainty upon. Even the most honest court system is fallible. There can be and is only one unmovable, infallible foundation of truth and that is G-d Himself and His Torah. If we would be certain of the Good News of Yehoshua of Nazareth we can only be certain on the basis of conviction from the Spirit of G-d of sin and of righteousness and of judgment, a conviction that is based upon the Torah of G-d.
It is only through such a conviction that we can come to repentance and faith toward the God of Israel. Questions about the historicity of the Good News or the Torah arise when we begin to think from an assumption that we are capable of seeing evidence clearly and judging it to come to a conclusion about what is true and what is false. If we trust scholars or scientests as expert witnesses in making such judgments, we trust that their minds and hearts are pure enough from bias and all moral corruption to be able to cross-reference their evidence to be able to test their theories and prove them to our physical senses or sensibilities.
Thus when we judge according to the proofs of scholarship and science we buy into the philosophy of materialism, the philosophy that nothing is true or real that cannot be proved in terms of physical matter or physical energy. By definition materialism rules out the existence of G-d who is spirit before it even begins to present its case concerning the veracity of the Biblical record. There can, therefore, be no possibility of minds that are able to begin thinking only with the paradigm of materialism to understand the words of the Biblical record, and yet they proceed to give evidence against its historicity and to judge it. As this is the case, there can be no discussion with such thought on this level.
There is only one leve of discussion that is possible and that is the level of morality. Only when by the testimony of the Torah of G-d, given through Moshe or given by Yehoshua, has brought someone to actually listen to the words of the Bible will the Bible itself, with the help of G-d's Spirit, teach them how to understand it. For to begin to understand the Bible one must begin to learn to understand the world in terms of G-d's will, then of G-d's wisdom, compassion, grace and judgment. When one has learned to understand the world in terms of G-d's mercy then, and only then, will one be able to begin to learn to understand the nature of the material world and one's perception of the physical world of physical matter and energy. For time and space are not what they seem to be to mortal beings. The physical universe is not an existence in itself, but is an expression of the mercy of G-d, by which He allows it to exist conditioned upon His own eternal and unsearchable purpose of love.
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