First: one has to point out that the Bible is a collection of literature. Although most of that literature attempts to describe past events (i.e. is intended by the author(s) to be historical), several documents and several passages in the Bible definitely do NOT attempt to do that. See - for a rather obvious example - "The Song of Hannah" found in The Book of Judges. *** That being said: with regard to the (large and many) portions of the Bible that the author apparently intended the reader to accept as historical, I answer: "As far as we can tell: those portions are largely historically accurate." *** Note that for most of the events described in the Bible, the Bible is our best (usually ONLY) evidence, and so for most Biblical events we cannot measure the historical accuracy. *** But for those events described in the Bible that CAN be compared to other, reliable historical sources, nearly all of them are corroborated by those other sources. *** BUT to be fair there are several exceptions, usually minor. Some of those exceptions are found in the Bible itself! That is: there are some passages in the Bible that, from the perspective of history, contradict other passages in the Bible. *** SO: it's accurate to say that the Bible DEFINITELY is NOT ENTIRELY historically accurate. However, one could reasonably CONTEND - based on LIMITED EVIDENCE - that NEARLY all of the portions of the Bible that are intended as history are historically accurate.

The Bible is the most accurately transmitted book from the ancient world. No other ancient book has as many, as early or more accurately copied manuscripts.

In a word, YES.

someone had to document the history in the Bible

Yes, and very accurately predicts history before it happens showing that its origins are from outside of our time dimension.

For the layman's needs, I think so. Not a lot of people comb through the Bible to compare passages with each other. There are differences, though. But one has to keep in mind that the ones who did the actual recording of events were working through interpretation - for their part, it was 100% accurate. But different people had different inspirations that affected their interpretations and this, I think, is where the claimed "inaccuracies" come from. Quotes should be pretty reliable, but not all would have been recorded at the time they were said - a lot of quotes relied on someone's memory. People generally believe that the Bible is too complicated and not meant to be understood. Actually, it is meant to be understood by anyone who reads what pertains to them. There is a lot that isn't meant for the average person to understand - that's why Jesus spoke in parables.

To an extent, as the victor writes history. In ancient times, many peoples borrowed the histories of others. The Torah, or bible had a hidden spiritual meaning, as does religion in general even down to the rituals carried out in the churches, temples etc. King Solomon's temple, was designed on the premise of a man laying down, hence shadowing, the teaching of man being the temple of God, the kingdom within, which exists in the Christian teaching.