Short thread: Some skeptics like to say "Spider-man fallacy" when a Christian points to certain historical or archaeological facts that demonstrate some sort of truthfulness of the Bible.

But if these details were unimportant, then why do Biblical critics point out so-called historical errors and contradictions? They're trying to discredit the Gospels as being close up to the facts and as reliable.

To discredit an eyewitness, lawyers will often try and show their testimony is unreliable somehow, and will sometimes go so far as to try and show that they weren't up close to the reported events.

The truth of the matter is historical accuracy is a big deal. If an author is consistently correct in matters that we can fact check, it should raise our trust in matters that we can't directly look into. Unless we have a doctrine against miracles.

The Gospel writers don't just get a few details right, they get dozens. Here's a good sampling of mundane facts that Luke gets correct. https://isjesusalive.com/84-reasons-why-we-know-luke-was-a-traveling-companion-of-paul/

This is more than just "Oh, look. We have archaeological proof that Pilate and Caiaphas were real, or historical proof from Tacitus and Josephus that Jesus existed".

The other big problem with the Spider-Man fallacy is that the historical novel wasn't invented until centuries after the Gospels and Acts were written.

Here's a CS Lewis quote that's on the money "I have been reading poems, romances, vision-literature, legends, myths all my life. I know what they are like. I know that not one of them is like this...

...Of this text there are only two possible views. Either this is reportage - though it may no doubt contain errors - pretty close up to the facts; nearly as close as Boswell....

...Or else, some unknown writer in the second century, without known predecessors, or successors, suddenly anticipated the whole technique of modern, novelistic, realistic narrative...

...If it is untrue, it must be narrative of that kind. The reader who doesn't see this has simply not learned to read."

IMO, the Spider-Man fallacy is pretty hopeless. /end.