Mis-match between gospels on the demons to pigs story

[Wertbag]

The story of Jesus casting demons into pigs is repeated in both Matthew and Luke, and yet the stories differ in significant ways:

 

Matthew 8:28-33:

When he arrived at the other side in the region of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men coming from the tombs met him. They were so violent that no one could pass that way.  “What do you want with us, Son of God?” they shouted. “Have you come here to torture us before the appointed time?”

Some distance from them a large herd of pigs was feeding. The demons begged Jesus, “If you drive us out, send us into the herd of pigs.”

He said to them, “Go!” So they came out and went into the pigs, and the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and died in the water. Those tending the pigs ran off, went into the town and reported all this, including what had happened to the demon-possessed men.

 

Luke 8:26-34:

Then they sailed to the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. When Jesus had stepped out on land, there met him a man from the city who had demons. For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he had not lived in a house but among the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell down before him and said with a loud voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me.” For he had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. (For many a time it had seized him. He was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the desert.) Jesus then asked him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Legion,” for many demons had entered him. And they begged him not to command them to depart into the abyss. Now a large herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside, and they begged him to let them enter these. So he gave them permission. Then the demons came out of the man and entered the pigs, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and drowned.

When the herdsmen saw what had happened, they fled and told it in the city and in the country.

 

So, the region name differs (maybe a simple spelling mistake?), one story is a single mad man while the other is a pair of violent men, what Jesus says differs and only one account mentions the demon's name.  For those of a fundamentalist view, having the words that Jesus said differ is a major problem.  If the writers are making up conversations, then how can you trust anything claimed of Jesus as actually his words?  Any profound statements claimed to be from Jesus, may also be made up by the writers, or later editors.  It does leave one feeling like this is all very man-made.

 

Did God give laws or were they the authors addition?  Did Jesus claim to be God?  Did the rules for salvation come from God or from the author?  If you can't trust the writings, then it leaves everything up to guesswork.

[Casualfanboy16]

3 hours ago, Wertbag said:

It does leave one feeling like this is all very man-made.

Exactly! I mean, I can forgive minor things like the (potential) spelling mistake, but having inconsistentencies like this doesn't make this seem divinely inspired, but rather man-made.

 

If I'm supposed to take this book seriously and think of it as this divine and perfectly inerrant holy word, then why did God entrust humans(who he deems fallible and who fall short of his impossible to reach standards) to have their hand in writing this? Why couldn't God just write it out himself instead of making us do the work? I keep questioning this constantly lol.

 

Plus, if believing in this is a matter of life or death... why would he entrust us lowly humans to do the work? With all the inconsistencies and all the other things... it's impossible to believe, but if this is the book that we're supposed to think is divinely inspired by any means, then the writer's should've stepped up their game. Like, if we don't believe in this, it's literally a death sentence. And since the writers have done such a horrible job and the God of the Bible is literally just so utterly ridiculous, we are left to try and decipher this bullshit in our incredibly short human lifespan to determine where we're going to spend the rest of eternity. Fucking hilarious.

[♦ Fuego ♦]

Bart Ehrman talks about how scribes changed the stories to make them more interesting, to make them fit a particular view, and how other scribes would write notes on the side exclaiming that these scribes were errant arrogant fools for changing what had been handed down. But such is the motivation of a religious view that insists that it is correct. Here, let me help you out there God. We have such clear examples of additions, and others that are probably additions since the rest of the gospel takes a different stance. The scribes really wanted the gospels to agree, but they are really quite different from different writers (all Greek) and different geographic areas and different groups of believers. 

[Wertbag]

18 hours ago, Casualfanboy16 said:

If I'm supposed to take this book seriously and think of it as this divine and perfectly inerrant holy word, then why did God entrust humans(who he deems fallible and who fall short of his impossible to reach standards) to have their hand in writing this? Why couldn't God just write it out himself instead of making us do the work? I keep questioning this constantly lol.

I've heard it called the problem of instruction, why would God entrust His most critical writings to a bunch of illiterate bronze age people, two thousand years before the printing press was invented?  Why does He not protect His word so that we know which books, which translation and which interpretation is the correct one?  Why allow these disagreements on His book to break His church into numerous parts wracked with infighting?

 

It does also raise the question; was Jesus literate?  If he was born to a lowly carpenter, then an education including reading and writing was quite likely not available.  We have no writings from him, or any that claim he wrote anything at any time.  The bible just has a birth story then skips 30 years to when he starts preaching, we know nothing about how he was raised, where, what education he had or what work he did.  It's like he and his family were not even aware he was God/the Messiah until decades later when he finally figured it out.

[Casualfanboy16]

1 hour ago, Wertbag said:

I've heard it called the problem of instruction, why would God entrust His most critical writings to a bunch of illiterate bronze age people, two thousand years before the printing press was invented?  Why does He not protect His word so that we know which books, which translation and which interpretation is the correct one?  Why allow these disagreements on His book to break His church into numerous parts wracked with infighting?

Yeah, why would God not forsee how blatantly stupid it is to give a bunch of illiterate people the responsibility of delivering his divine word? Then on top of this we have the Tower of Babel. God switched up everyone's languages and now you have the extra hurdle of not only translating everything, but trusting that the translators translated it correctly and concisely as possible to the original texts.

 

Then also with the various interpretations, we might not even know which one is the correct one or if there's more than one correct one. There's so many different denominations that are convinced they are the "true" way to get saved and everyone else's gonna burn or whatever. There's so much variation in all the different sects and nobody can agree on a lot of things. How is that supposed to convince me in the slightest that this book is worth following? How is this supposed to convince me that this book is perfect, inerrant, unchanging, holy, etc, etc? If your sacred texts are this horribly put together and the people within the religion have so many different ways to interpret something that's supposed to be inerrant and not fallible, why should I, or anyone else, follow it?

 

1 hour ago, Wertbag said:

It does also raise the question; was Jesus literate?  If he was born to a lowly carpenter, then an education including reading and writing was quite likely not available.  We have no writings from him, or any that claim he wrote anything at any time.  The bible just has a birth story then skips 30 years to when he starts preaching, we know nothing about how he was raised, where, what education he had or what work he did.  It's like he and his family were not even aware he was God/the Messiah until decades later when he finally figured it out.

Huh. Never thought about that. He probably wasn't the most educated person unless someone else was teaching him at the time, but even then that could be unlikely given the time period. 

 

You'd think too that for being the literal son of God, there would be more documented about him.  For being someone of divine importance, it's weird that it skips a significant portion of his life. You'd think the bronze age equivalent of the paparazzi would be following him around everywhere documenting him or something lol.

[◊ Weezer ◊]

4 hours ago, Wertbag said:

 

It does also raise the question; was Jesus literate?  

 

There are two theories about this.  One is that he traveled with a caravan to the east and studied under eastern gurus.  Supposedly there are some eastern writings that mention some young man coming there from the west to study.  His teaching did have an eastern flavor to it.

 

The other is that he studied under the Essenes which were close by where he lived.  Some of his teaching and life was similar to the Essenes, which in turn seemed to have some eastern influence.  Who knows??  Who knows if he really existed?? 

[mwc]

14 hours ago, Wertbag said:

It does also raise the question; was Jesus literate?  If he was born to a lowly carpenter, then an education including reading and writing was quite likely not available.  We have no writings from him, or any that claim he wrote anything at any time.  The bible just has a birth story then skips 30 years to when he starts preaching, we know nothing about how he was raised, where, what education he had or what work he did.  It's like he and his family were not even aware he was God/the Messiah until decades later when he finally figured it out.

     A good article that covers this is here (Ehrman's Blog).  He states numbers as high as 10% in urban centers (I've seen numbers placed as high as 20% for reasons that aren't important here but they're similar as to how the 10% is derived).  But for the same conclusions the numbers work out to about 3% of the Israelite population is estimated to have been literate.  That is someone who could have actually written something like a document as opposed to functionally illiterate in that they might know a few words to get by in society (which was probably a much higher number).

 

     So, the odds of someone in rural Galilee being literate would be around 3% but if we're extremely generous we might say 10% (for no actual reason other than to be generous).

 

     Jesus is only said have written once and nothing beyond some scribbles on the ground.  That doesn't really mean much as far as literacy goes.

 

     There are very late stories, from the 1800's, that mention jesus travelling to other parts of the world but they're, um, highly unreliable *cough*false*cough* (here) and wouldn't provide jesus with any useful literacy in his homeland even if true.  He would need to know Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek or Latin not some far flung language from outside the Empire.

 

     I would place a real jesus in the 3%.  He would be illiterate.  He may also have a small vocabulary of words, perhaps in multiple local  languages, that he knew (ie. he could read and maybe even write) so he could function in society (ie. read basic common signage, etc.).  If he was multilingual, as far a verbal skills, I couldn't say, but that wouldn't mean he could actually read or write even a single word (but the story says he could so we'll grant him that much).

 

          mwc