Dr Paul Allen

  I was in a dialogue with an atheist regarding what he believes is one of “many” so-called “biblical contradictions.” The odd guy I am, I find this sort of thing fun. In any event, I love defending the Bible and Christianity. He brought up the story of Jesus casting out demons and sending them into pigs, which promptly ran over a cliff into the sea. The Gospels use different names for the places where this occurred: Mark 5:1 ... the country of the Ger’asenes. (Luke 8:26 is identical) Matthew 8:28 ... the country of the Gadarenes ...  This is supposedly a “contradiction.” Gerasa is (as we know) some 30-35 miles southeast of the Sea of Galilee but may have also been the name of the larger region. Wikipedia states, "In the second half of the 1st century AD, Jerash achieved great prosperity.”  Gadara is about six miles from the sea. Its ruins include two amphitheatres, a basilica, a temple, a hippodrome, aqueducts and colonnades, showing its importance and stature. “Gergesen...

In Matthew 8:28–34, why did the demons ask Jesus’s permission to be sent into the pigs, when those pigs would be immediately drowned? Where else would they have gone? And where did they go after ‘the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the waters’?  Matthew 8:28 And when he came to the other side, to the country of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men met him, coming out of the tombs, so fierce that no one could pass that way. And behold, they cried out, “What have you to do with us, O Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?” Now a herd of many pigs was feeding at some distance from them. And the demons begged him, saying, “If you cast us out, send us away into the herd of pigs.” And he said to them, “Go.” So they came out and went into the pigs, and behold, the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the waters. The herdsmen fled, and going into the city they told everything, especially what had happen...

You’ve been there. You start the new year with the lofty goal of reading through the entire Bible before the next new year and…you run into Leviticus. Then your wonderful plans get derailed because…well because reading chapter after chapter of the Old Testament Law seems—if you’re being honest—boring and irrelevant. Yet these laws are in our Bibles. That means they are God’s holy, inspired words. So what do we do with the Old Testament Law? On top of this question, there’s another complication. It seems to be fairly common these days for people to point to the laws God gave Israel in order to discredit Christianity. Here is one such accusation: Murray McCoy I am pretty confident every Christian pick and chooses which scriptures they choose to follow and ignore. The same Leviticus that condemns homosexuals also says Christians can't eat prawns nor can they touch or eat pork. Pretty sure I've had hot dogs at every church fundraiser with pork, as a kid. The difference...