How important is the historical verification of Biblical events to traditional Christian faith?

Two answers to a question regarding the Book of Mormon contain the following: > Without the Book of Mormon, nothing at all remains. If the Book of > Mormon is true, Joseph is a prophet and everything else that entails. > If it's not true, then so is the claim that Joseph is a prophet, and > everything comes crashing down. It might still be a good spiritual > book, but of human origin (and of a human who then wrongly claimed to > be a prophet). > > Joseph Smith himself stated: > > > “Take away the Book of Mormon and the revelations, and where is our > > religion? We have none” (Minutes and Discourse, 21 April 1834, Church > > History Library, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt > > Lake City). > > What impact is made within LDS theology regarding the spiritual content of the Book of Mormon when the historical claims therein are shown by both secular and Mormon scholars to be factually unsupported? > > None. **Just as the bible is not an archaeological/scientific text > (garden of Eden, Noah flood, etc), the Book of Mormon is not as well.** > It, like the Bible, is a religious text. Archaeological/historic > evidence is nice to have but not necessary (though plenty of evidence > exists IMO. The above are partial responses to the question "How does LDS theology suffer when Book of Mormon historical claims are unsupported?" I know that this is a very difficult, perhaps impossible, question to turn towards the Bible since there are multiple hundreds of individuals, cities, nations, and events described in the Old and New Testaments that have been verified through archaeology, contemporary writings, and other scholarly efforts. Having said that, where science appears to contradict biblical content, the traditional Christian response is often strikingly similar to the Mormon response emboldened above: > Some Christian fundamentalists seem to lose their spiritual balance by reacting too much against science. Others look upon the Bible as an ancient science book. It is not. - faithmag.com There are others, though, who appear to rest quite heavily upon external verification: > I often have people tell me that “the Bible’s not a science textbook!” But the Bible is actually a textbook of historical science—and the only such textbook that is totally reliable and infallible. - Ken Ham Again, acknowledging the complication that the reliance upon external verification may be strong **because** it actually exists, the question I am clumsily attempting to ask is: How would traditional Christian theology suffer if there were little or no verification of the Bible's historical content? * I do not know how to ask this without risking closure due to it's suppositional nature and broad target audience. Apologies.