Hello Gregs, welcome to the forum,
Here is an old JW that has been studding the Bible in over 40 years, including University examines in History of Ideas and Science, Philosophy, and History. I´m from Scandinavia. You are quite right about to total inconsistence of the Bible stories. Not only the different side stories, but in fact the very core of the Bible teachings according to Christianity as a whole. The core teachings of almost all Christian “cults” are: “Jesus died for all our sins, so that all who believe in him not should not face death but have eternal life.” !? Think of it!!
Jesus is send by his father to make people (his children) understand that if they obey him and listen to him, they will have eternal life?!!
We kill him, spit on him, humiliate him and he dies. This by those who really had a chance to see him, all his miracles, his wonderful teachings a.s.f.
And when he is death, all of a sudden, we are forgiven, by his father. We are suddenly in a much better position to his father then before our bestial behavior?
During 40 years of bending this problem I have never been able to understand the logic in this reasoning. You got to have a lot of “faith” to understand why Jehova will forgive you all your sins because your ancestors killed his son….
Continue to research, not only the Bible, the Koran, and even other “wholly scriptures” They are all totally whiteout all consistency, they are all just old stories, interesting to for Historians, just to understand how ancient people thought…..But absolutely inappropriate to understand “the world”
Bugbear