The Book of Genesis

[Minimalist]

I have heard of the similarities with the sumerian mythology, but there's one thing you have to take into consideration : archeologists and historians DO NOT consider oral tradition. The sources of the antediluvian myth are not to be found in a written tradition : it's way too old for that (unless you consider we started to speak on monday the 1st of april and then started to write the next week ;D)

Agreed, all of this stuff began as oral tales, told and retold and changed every time they did so.  The oral tales are gone and there is no hope of recovering them.  The closest we can get is the earliest version of the story which was written down.  These versions are Sumerian.  For the later Noah story we have three antecedents in Ziusdra, Atrahasis and Gilgamesh.  The story containing the tale of Ziusdra is written in Sumerian cuneiform and dates to the 17th century BCE or the Middle Bronze Age.  By comparing the three tales we can see how the myth evolved even in written form.  The Noah variant is the last and thus the furthest from the original.  The same can be said of the Cain/Abel tale.  You might be able to ascertain the particular propaganda line that the person who re-wrote the story from a so-called "jewish" point of view but the bullshit of fundies aside, we have no indication that there were any "jews" in the modern sense of the word prior to the Persian period which began around 530 BC.  It always drives the fundies nuts when it is pointed out that the earliest versions we have of their so-called old testament are written in Greek - not Hebrew.  The ramifications of this are too much for them so we normally just get



this in response.

Here's another example of the Sumerian antecedents of bible tales.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlul_b%C...%C4%93meqi

Ludlul bēl nēmeqi ("I Will Praise the Lord of Wisdom"), also sometimes known in English as The Poem of the Righteous Sufferer, is a Mesopotamian poem (ANET, pp. 434–437) written in Akkadian that concerns itself with the problem of the unjust suffering of an afflicted man, named Shubshi-meshre-Shakkan. The author is tormented, but he doesn't know why. He has been faithful in all of his duties to the gods. He speculates that perhaps what is good to man is evil to the gods and vice versa. He is ultimately delivered from his sufferings.[

Remember that this pre-dates the book of Job by at least 1200 years.