(April 17, 2013 at 12:05 pm)ChadWooters Wrote:(April 17, 2013 at 11:13 am)Lord Privy Seal Wrote: The collection of texts we call "the Bible" did not descend from heaven on a ray of light to a soundtrack of angelic choirs. The original texts were written by men, ordinary human beings, just like you and me. ...The texts were then assembled by men, redacted by men, and declared to be "scripture" by menI do not disagree. The following as part of a lecture that I gave just last night:
"Most of us have some knowledge about ancient myths that have remarkable similarity to the stories of the bible. Many of these predate their Scriptural form and vary in many important details. The Gilgamesh flood epic sounds much like Noah’s flood. Babylonian artifacts match description of Cherubim and Seraphim found in the biblical texts. This should not surprise us. The Word originated from YHVH, divinity itself, as an inexpressible. To reach the human intellect, it needed to take a form adapted to our understanding. Under the Lord’s guidance, spiritually perceptive story tellers folded spiritual messages into longstanding legends."
So, even though many Bible stories are derivative of older tales, somehow you just know your version is right and everyone else's is wrong? Do you ever stop to consider that, perhaps, the Bible is just full of derivative myths? It seems to be the height of (admittedly very tall) Christian arrogance to suggest that the world's various myths and legends are all just people trying to express what a few select people got right and wrote down as your scripture, when you are absolutely incapable of demonstrating that your version of the myths are in any way more credible than any other (or that any of them are credible at all).
