And that would:
- Increase your faith
- Not effect your faith
- Lessen your faith
We all had a “time machine” (video tape) to revisit the Rodney King beating and to this day there isn’t a consensus on what really happened.
Facts that are in the past are irrelevant faith-wise - if Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941 (which it did), “faith” has nothing to do with it - it is fact.
I am sorry if the question confused you. Consider it withdrawn.
Lots of regular churchgoers are comfortable with the idea that the Great Flood is an allegory. Adding the Sermon on the Mount to the list of allegories wouldn’t necessarily cause them any problem.
On the other hand, if you went back in time, and came back with video of the Sermon on the Mount, lots of zealots would use that as a selling point. (While arguing fiercely over the proper translation from Hebrew to English, of course. 
)
The idea that religion’s strength or value to its adherents is based on evidence is faulty. The combination of human traits that support religion (tribalism, a yearning for meaning, solipsism, etc.) are pretty impervious to evidence.
You can pretty clearly see this in modern quasi-religious belief systems that have sprung up recently, and are directly contradicted by evidence that we’ve had for centuries. Flat Earthers for example.
In all the times I’ve seen this basic question posed over the years I never thought of it that way. But you’re right! 
And if Jesus was recorded as saying “blessed are the cheesemakers …”
On these boards I’m sure you’re right, because actual Bible literalists don’t last long. But go watch Ken Hamm sometime. There are tons of literalists out there.
In fact, in Judges there is a lot of mention of the Ark of the Covenant, but never a mention of the Torah, and as far as I remember no one lived by it. No mention at all until it was conveniently “found” in the Temple. One of the many things that made me an atheist.
First, your time machine wouldn’t be able to see further back than 6000 years.
Secondly, it’s obviously a fake created by the Great Deceiver to test the believer’s faith.
You can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into.
Despite being taken to church on a regular basis as a child and have attended my fair share of VBS I still don’t consider myself biblically knowledgeable. Still, I question the above statement.
I remember reading a Time magazine article on religion. A leading religious leader, when asked about the historical Jesus, said it was irrelevant. The message was the important part, he opined. I absolutely do not understand this.
If Jesus was not the son of God, and he did not die for our sins and then rise from the dead and ascend into heaven then wasn’t he just some guy with an opinion about the meaning of life? Most all religious people I know personally think these things happened because they read it in the Bible. This is (their) evidence. And that evidence is central to their belief.
The lack of evidence for the historical Jesus and especially the miracles is getting embarrassing to this guy. However, he still needs a job. So it is miracles, shmiracles.
While some of the more rational adherents would leave the church, others, especially those whose paychecks depend on it, will find obscure Biblical verses that no one noticed before which will be interpreted as a prophecy for whatever the time machine finds.
I will accept that facts and faith are totally separate when religionists reject supposedly positive evidence as soundly as they reject negative evidence.
Says the man who knows the evidence isn’t as clear cut as some would have you believe, so let’s move on, and what kind of weather are you having your way?
Which is why it is important to find some kind of historical Jesus, the evidence should be overwhelming, I would think if one was to follow his teachings. And Jesus’ message wasn’t all of that, anyway, most would have a problem with his pro-slavery stance, eternal fiery damnation for those that didn’t think he was all that.
How many Biblical events are known with sufficient detail of time & location that it would even be remotely possible to go there just from a simple logistics point of view?
Let’s say that you thought it would be great to get an HD film of Jesus giving his famous Sermon On The Mount. Could you even pick a year?
Moving on just a tiny bit. Let’s say that you had an aunt who had successfully dealt with the technology and logistics & presented you with an HD film of the Sermon on the Mount. I wonder what things could be learned from it?
This discussion seems to be taking place in an alternate universe where nobody has transcendent religious experiences. But carry on.
I don’t know who the “leading religious leader” was, but one person who has said similar things is the late Marcus Borg (whom I would call a “scholar” rather than a “leader”). Here’s one place he’s explained it, writing in response to a guy named Jones:
I’m not totally sure I understand, or agree with, his point, but it makes a certain amount of sense: if the resurrection has any meaning or significance or result then it is that meaning and that result that are the important thing, not the mere fact that it happened (or how or when or in what sense it happened). (And if it doesn’t have any meaning or result, why would it matter whether it happened?)
As to RTFirefly’s point: I’ve never had any transcendent religious experiences I could point to as “evidence” for religion. But anyone who has might reasonably say something like “I’ve experienced Jesus in the present. Why should my faith depend on historical evidence for what happened in the past? My faith is ultimately about what IS true now.”
What if we went back in time and found that every one of these ‘transcendent religious experiences’ were caused by temporal lobe epilepsy or some other neurological cause? Would that not demonstrate that religion is a delusion, rather than reality?
Of course not. God put that epilepsy there on purpose specifically to give that person a transcendent religious experience.