Most probably they did, but not because they described real demons, but because they misidentified mental illness as demonic possession. “Mental illness” as we now understand it wasn’t even a concept at that time.
Am I thinking it was a bit more than that. Especially since it seems the destruction was so massive and absolute. This destruction was possibly achieved by cosmic air burst.
There are still people who think mental illness is demon possession. I was once a Pentecostal Christian. When I was eleven or twelve, one of my closest friends was severely mentally ill (first attempted suicide at age 9.) Her mother was obsessed with faith healing and attributed it all to demons. Every week at church people had to lay hands on her and pray away the demons. One night my friend started convulsing. Rather then calling a fucking ambulance, her mother recruited me to cast out the demon. When my friend regained consciousness, she remembered nothing and I had to fill her in on the details.
Truly it was one of the scariest things I’ve ever been through. Long after I became an atheist I was stumped by the events of that night. It was such a bizarre experience. What had happened to my friend?
That all became clear in 2016 when I had a grand mal seizure.
Eh, could you give us a scientific description of this phenomenon? I’ve never heard of it.
Yeah, I know, and that’s depressing. And what a dick move to delegate you the impossible task to “cast out the demon”, a task that nobody is prepared and able to. How old were you when that happened?
Even the rather science-friendly Catholic Church still has exorcists with a “special” qualification, which is mind-boggling. Much abuse, up to torture and murder, has been applied in exorcist practices.
We can’t definitively prove that biblical authors were not lying or twisting things. A lot of people point to historical and archeological support. The inclusion of negative details. It would seem if these dudes were going to lie they would not include so much information about biblical figures failure and bad behavior and instead paint them as perfect people who always did right. Many of Jesus apostles and disciples faced persecution and death. This is evidence they were not dying for a lie they knew to be false. The gospels are considered eye witness account or derived from them. I would also say Undesigned coincidences is something to consider as well.
There is no 100% way to prove what you are asking. A lot of stuff from ancient history can not definitely be proven. My understanding is historians try to establish plausibility rather than 100% proof. Historians will use written accounts, archeological evidence from multiple independent sources if possible. Of course this does not help with the supernatural stuff in the bible which can not be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Even the most pious Biblical scholars (and I mean real scholars, theologians, who see themselves as scientists) won’t think that any of the four gospels are told by eye witnesses. And if you go by “derived from them”, the game of telephone starts.
I believe I was twelve. It definitely affected me. I was afraid to be alone after that, because, you know, demons are everywhere.
You know, I had a profoundly dysfunctional mother too and maybe that’s why we bonded. Looking back I can see a kind of Munchausen by proxy situation going on, her mother just raked in the sympathy for her troubled daughter. It was deeply messed up.
I think that’s when my Mom said, “How about you go to this nice Baptist church, instead?”
That’s just fucked up. I’m sorry you had to endure that abuse @Spice_Weasel. I was born and raised mainstream Catholic and never encountered physical or mental abuse, but I know I was just lucky.
Thanks. I had a lot of other bad things going on at the time, but as a result of that incident, I look askance at anyone indoctrinating children. I still have lingering fears of hell and I haven’t been Christian in decades.
My son is destined to be a heathen. First of all, he’s a math and science kid, extremely concrete, which will lend itself to skepticism. Second of all, my husband’s family is Catholic. We recently attended a Catholic funeral and when my son got up to see the body, he announced, clear as day: “What’s the giant “t” on the casket?”
I’m sure everyone was scandalized.
That’s a great story! 
I’m glad you fixed up your life so well, and overcame the hardships of your upbringing.
Most of the disciples disappeared into history, without any solid evidence they died for their beliefs. I know the church made up stuff. As for those who did die, do you have evidence that they were given an opportunity to recant? The Romans were not noted for giving second chances. For all we know Paul was yelling “I didn’t mean it!” as he was executed.
And dying for a belief does not make it true. Are you a Mormon? Joseph Smith died for his belief, and that we have a record of. How about those people who killed themselves to ride the comet? How about the 9/11 terrorists?
The lack of written eyewitness testimony has already been noted. Plus there are sections of the Bible which no living eye witness could have seen, like Jesus chatting with the devil.
Yes, my understanding is that scholars believe that snippets were written down, and other snippets were transmitted orally, and a few decades after Jesus died, when his followers realized he wasn’t imminently returning, they decided to write down what they remembered and could pull together.
From Wikipedia:
The canonical gospels are the four which appear in the New Testament of the Bible. They were probably written between AD 66 and 110, which puts their composition likely within the lifetimes of various eyewitnesses, including Jesus’s own family.[14][15][16][17][18]
I believe that the authors of the gospels believed what they wrote. That doesn’t mean i believe it’s all true.
A cosmic airburst is the atmospheric explosion of an extraterrestrial object, like a meteor or comet, that occurs high in the atmosphere rather than impacting the ground, causing widespread heat and shockwave damage. Events like the 1908 Tunguska event and the destruction of the ancient city of Tall el-Hammam are examples of cosmic airbursts, which leave behind evidence such as meltglass and shocked quartz.
A meteoroid enters Earth’s atmosphere at hypersonic speed.
The object breaks apart due to the intense heat and air pressure.
This fragmentation causes a rapid, powerful explosion.
Heat and Flames: Extreme temperatures (over 2000° C) can ignite wood, burst clothing into flames, and melt materials like pottery and mud bricks.
Shockwaves: Powerful blast waves travel from the explosion, demolishing buildings and stripping agricultural soils.
Meltglass and Spherules: The intense heat and pressures can melt sand and iron, creating meltglass, tiny metallic spherules, and carbon-rich layers found in the geologic record.
Shocked Quartz: The high pressures of an airburst create a specific type of fractured quartz, which is a key indicator of these events.
Saltification: In some cases, such as at Tall el-Hammam, airbursts can mobilize and concentrate high concentrations of salts, rendering the land unusable for agriculture for centuries
In addition if its just mental illness then why does the mental illness respond to being cast out? Why does this mental illness surface reveal itself as an actual separate entity from the person? The bible says Jesus cast out demons that entered some swine and the swine drowned themselves in the water. Were the pigs mentally ill as well. Matthew 8:28-34,Luke 8:26-37
I would say if every case of a demon being cast out is just mentally illness then we need to start applying this to the many mentally unstable people walking the streets.
The answer is, it’s a religious myth and never happened. Myths are not evidence of something actually being possible, or having actually happened. You might as well claim that Athena emerging from the forehead of Zeus means men can get brain-pregnant.
They actually like swimming
But…
That’s just a regular pig, you need to test one weighed down by a legion of demons.
As a piglet, his mom blamed him for her alcoholism, so he counts
That second example? Not so much. Both the claims of a supposed air burst and the weaker claim that it was the site of the Biblical story of Sodom are not really believed by historical and/or biblical scholars any more.
Arguments Against Locating Sodom at Tall el-Hammam - Biblical Archaeology Society
RETRACTED ARTICLE: A Tunguska sized airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam a Middle Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea | Scientific Reports Artice from Nature retracted for good reasons