One of Jehovah's Witnesses needs your help

[Aractus]

Why we can know for certainty that it is absolutely not the word of a divine being.

Okay, as for my previous post - the archaeological record shows that the events recorded that include the Patriarchs, the slavery in Egypt, the Exodus, and the conquest of Canaan did not happen. As Min posted, you should look at "The Bible Unearthed" or any other publications by Israel Finkelstein who is a well respected bronze/early iron-age era Israeli archaeologist. He did however determine that Solomon was a real person, however his kingdom did not amount to anything like the extravagance suggested in the Old Testament.

The New Testament does not have the kinds of massive faults that the Old Testament has. The NT books were all written much closer to the time they claim to report, although a handful of them were probably written in the second century. The later works in particular are thought to be Revaluation, 1 and 2 Peter, the pseudepigraphical Pauline epistles, and the book of Hebrews. There are a number of scholars who also argue for a later date of the gospel of John, however there are quite early copies of John and that suggests that it was in circulation by the end of the first century.

It does, however, contain inconsistencies. For instance, Mark 5 says that Jesus cast a "Legion" of daemons out of a man and cast them into a herd of pigs who then drown in the Sea of Galilee. The location given is Gerasa. Matthew 8 records the same event, but this time there are two daemon-possessed men that are healed, and this time the location is Gergasa. Now it really doesn't matter that there's an extra gentleman who gets healed in Matthew, but what does matter is that both locations are real physical cities, and here's a map:



As you can see, Gerasa is nowhere near the Sea of Galilee. Therefore Matthew changed the location to what is believed to be either Hippus or Gadara - which are much closer to the Sea (in fact Hippus is right next to and therefore fits the description to a T). Anyway you look at it this is a contradictory account - they can't both be right. Either it happened in Gerasa as Mark and Luke claim, or it happened in Gergasa as Matthew claims.

Mark 5:13: "So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out, and entered the pigs, and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea and were drowned in the sea."

NOT possible, it was nowhere near the sea.

There are a few more instances of clear contradictions like this in the NT - if it was divinely inspired then there wouldn't be contradictory accounts.