sooda
Veteran Member
The stories are all different.
The Hebrews were a Canaanite tribe who invented a history and identity for themselves. It really is as simple as that.
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The Bible, Not As Original As You'd Think
- Thread starter Skwim
- Start date
The stories are all different.
The Hebrews were a Canaanite tribe who invented a history and identity for themselves. It really is as simple as that.
sooda
Veteran Member
There is a lot more to the history of the Middle East than the Old Testament.
sooda
Veteran Member
Sorry, I think that is totally wrong idea and can’t be supported by any real-life observation.
sooda
Veteran Member
What? Are you kidding?
Skwim
Veteran Member
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
Only someone that had no education in geology at all could make such a claim seriously. The evidence against the flood is endless the evidence for it is nonexistent.
When the flood happened as shown in the images that are here:
http://www.kolumbus.fi/r.berg/geology.html
It happened when the original single continent was broken and sunk. Results of that are:
1. Modern continents
2. Orogenic mountains
3. Vast sediment formations (For example Grand Canyon)
4. Marine fossils on high mountains
5. Oil and gas fields (results of the dead organic material).
6. Great glaciers (North and South pole). Climate cooled because of the flood, result was ice age.
7. All the stories about great flood.
All those should be found, if the flood really happened and I think we can agree that all those can be found in nature?
Only if you close your eyes. But, what do you think we should find, if the flood really happened as told in the Bible?
Here are few images that show the principle how it happened:
Are you a disciple of Jesus?
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
Sorry, you need something a lot better than a joke site.
We know when the continents split apart. We can date that event.
We know what flood deposits look like. We do not observe that.
By the way, we know that it took millions of years for the Grand Canyon to form. I have one picture of tributary to the Colorado river alone that proves that. All you have is a gross misunderstanding of observations.
Skwim
Veteran Member
Sorry, but imaginative renderings made to coincide with what is believed to be described in Biblical verses do not amount to "real-life observations." They amount to imaginative renderings, and no more.
Considering that, according to Biblical literalists, the earth was created around 4,000 BC and the flood about 2,,000 years later, all these immense restructurings of the earth, and the creation of oil and gas fields had to have taken place in an extremely short time. It presumes that everything, the mountains, the Grand Canyon, and the great rivers of the world, were all in their rightful places by at least 1,000 BC. Oh yes, and all the vegetation had time enough to rot and decay under tons of pressure so as to turn into the vast coal and gas fields on earth.
Do you have any idea of how much ignorance is required to buy such a story?
If nothing else, 1213, please pick up a good introductory book to physical geology or earth sciences. Here are two suggestions.
How Coal is Formed
Coal is a non-renewable energy source because it takes millions of years to form. That means what is in the ground now is all there is and we can’t realistically make more.
- The energy in coal comes from energy that was stored in giant plants that lived hundreds of millions of years ago in swamp forests, even before the dinosaurs! When these giant plants and ferns died, they formed layers at the bottom of the swamps.
- Water and dirt began to pile up on top of the dead plant remains.
- Over thousands of years pressure and heat would build up on top of the plant remains, undergoing chemical and physical changes and pushing out the oxygen, turning these remains into what we call coal.
Really!?
Three thousand years before Jesus. BG 2.11: The Supreme Lord said: While you speak words of wisdom, you are mourning for that which is not worthy of grief. The wise lament neither for the living nor for the dead.
BG 2.12: Never was there a time when I did not exist, nor you, nor all these kings; nor in the future shall any of us cease to be.
BG 2.20: The soul is neither born, nor does it ever die; nor having once existed, does it ever cease to be. The soul is without birth, eternal, immortal, and ageless. It is not destroyed when the body is destroyed.
BG 8.5: Those who relinquish the body while remembering Me at the moment of death will come to Me. There is certainly no doubt about this.
BG 10.20: O Arjun, I am seated in the heart of all living entities. I am the beginning, middle, and end of all beings.
BG 10.32: O Arjun, know me to be the beginning, middle, and end of all creation.
BG 10.39: I am the generating seed of all living beings, O Arjun. No creature moving or non-moving can exist without me.
BG 18.65: Always think of me, be devoted to me, worship me, and offer obeisance to me. Doing so, you will certainly come to me. This is my pledge to you, for you are very dear to me.
BG 18.66: Abandon all varieties of religion and simply surrender unto me alone. I shall liberate you from all sinful reactions; do not fear.
joelr
Well-Known Member
Right, and they borrowed all the main tenants of religion as we know of it today from the Persians.
After the Persian invasion that's when we see the Persian religion combine with Judaism.
22:00
joelr
Well-Known Member
Besides the science already posted we know them to be myth because the flood myths are some of the oldest known stories created by man. A deity sending a flood to destroy humans goes all the way back to African religions.
Flood myths are right up there with Roswell and Big Foot.
"A flood myth or deluge myth is a narrative in which a great flood, usually sent by a deity or deities, destroys civilization, often in an act of divine retribution. Parallels are often drawn between the flood waters of these myths and the primaeval waters found in certain creation myths, as the flood waters are described as a measure for the cleansing of humanity, in preparation for rebirth. Most flood myths also contain a culture hero, who "represents the human craving for life".[1]
The flood myth motif is found among many cultures as seen in the Mesopotamian flood stories, Deucalion and Pyrrha in Greek mythology, the Genesis flood narrative, Pralaya in Hinduism, the Gun-Yu in Chinese mythology, Bergelmir in Norse mythology, in the lore of the K'iche' and Maya peoples in Mesoamerica, the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwa tribe of Native Americans in North America, the Muisca, and Cañari Confederation, in South America, and the Aboriginal tribes in southern Australia.
Though the account of Noah in the Hebrew Bible has long been the most studied flood story by scholars, in the 19th century Assyriologist George Smith translated the first Babylonian account of a great flood. Further discoveries produced several versions of the Mesopotamian flood myth, with the account closest to that in Genesis found in a 700 BC Babylonian copy of the Epic of Gilgamesh.[2]:20-27 The known versions of the Mesopotamian flood myths have as their protagonists Atrahasis (in the 18th century BC Atrahasis Epic), Ziusudra (in the 17th century BC Sumerian Flood Story), and Utnapishtim (in the 7th century BC Epic of Gilgamesh).[3] The Sumerian King List relies on the flood motif to divide its history into preflood (antediluvian) and postflood periods. The preflood kings had enormous lifespans, whereas postflood lifespans were much reduced. The Sumerian flood myth found in the Deluge tablet was the epic of Ziusudra, who heard the gods' plan to destroy humanity, in response to which he constructed a vessel that delivered him from great waters.[4] In the more detailed Mesopotamian accounts of the flood, the Gilgamesh flood myth and the epic of Atrahasis, the highest god Enlil decides to destroy the world with a flood because humans have become too noisy.[3] The god Ea, who created humans out of clay and divine blood, secretly warns the hero Utnapishtim of the impending flood and gives him detailed instructions for building a boat so that life may survive.[3][5]"
Africa
Many African cultures have an oral tradition of a flood including the Kwaya, Mbuti, Maasai, Mandin, and Yoruba peoples.[1]
India
The Matsya avatar comes to the rescue of Manu
- Manu and Matsya: The legend first appears in Shatapatha Brahmana (700–300 BCE), and is further detailed in Matsya Purana (250–500 CE). Matsya (the incarnation of Lord Vishnu as a fish) forewarns Manu (a human) about an impending catastrophic flood and orders him to collect all the grains of the world in a boat; in some forms of the story, all living creatures are also to be preserved in the boat. When the flood destroys the world, Manu – in some versions accompanied by the seven great sages – survives by boarding the ark, which Matsya pulls to safety.
- Puluga, the creator god in the religion of the indigenous inhabitants of the Andaman Islands, sends a devastating flood to punish people who have forgotten his commands. Only four people survive this flood: two men and two women.
List of flood myths - Wikipedia
Flood myth - Wikipedia
Desert Snake
Veteran Member
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
The Noah's Ark myth was rather obviously copied from the Epic of Gilgamesh:
Epic of Gilgamesh - Wikipedia
It is older than the Noah's Ark myth.
And of course all of the sciences tell us why there was no flood. The evidence against the flood of Noah is so strong that people who claim that it is true are also claiming that their God is a liar, though most do not realize that.
Desert Snake
Veteran Member
Great. Supposedly there is a Babylonian myth, guess Im worshipping a whole pantheon of gods.
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
Could be. Some Christians tend to be very confused. Not all, in fact probably not even most, Christians believe the Noah's Ark myth. In most sects one does not have to believe the obvious myths of the Bible to be a Christian.
Do you think that God lies? If you don't you really cannot believe the Noah's Ark story.
joelr
Well-Known Member
In that myth Horus wasn't the dying/rising god, it was Osiris.
There are never reproductions between pagan myths, each one is different.
PhD R. Carrier
"Every single one of those beliefs was different from every other. The differences are what establish them as different gods, and not just revamped versions of the same god. The differences are irrelevant. Cultural diffusion and syncretism by definition always produces differences between the originating, existing beliefs and the resulting, new beliefs. So it is illogical to argue that because God A is “different” from God B, that therefore God B’s mythology was not adapted from God A’s. To the contrary, ideas that are witnessed as pervasive (many different kinds of virgin births; many different kinds of resurrections) are seen as bearing a cultural commonality (“a” virgin birth; “a” resurrection), and that commonality is then adapted to a specific belief system, creating a new religion. The process always involves transformation: the creation of differences. Those differences are what is brought by the native, adopting culture, and then added, to transform the adopted culture."
But they are all part of a savior god mytheme and a sub-mytheme is the dying/rising god
"Not all these savior gods were dying-and-rising gods. That was a sub-mytheme. Indeed, dying-and-rising gods (and mere men) were a broader mytheme; because examples abounded even outside the context of known savior cults (I’ll give you a nearly complete list below). But within the savior cults, a particular brand of dying-and-rising god arose. And Jesus most closely corresponds to that mythotype.
Other savior gods within this context experienced “passions” that did not involve a death. For instance, Mithras underwent some great suffering and struggle (we don’t have many details), through which he acquired his power over death that he then shares with initiates in his cult, but we’re pretty sure it wasn’t a death. Mentions of resurrection as a teaching in Mithraism appear to have been about the future fate of his followers (in accordance with the Persian Zoroastrian notion of a general resurrection later borrowed by the Jews). So all those internet memes listing Mithras as a dying-and-rising god? Not true. So do please stop repeating that claim. Likewise, so far as we can tell Attis didn’t become a rising god until well after Christianity began (and even then his myth only barely equated to a resurrection; previous authors have over-interpreted evidence to the contrary). Most others, however, we have pretty solid evidence for as actually dying, and actually rising savior gods."
Article and sources:
Dying-and-Rising Gods: It's Pagan, Guys. Get Over It. • Richard Carrier
joelr
Well-Known Member
It's better to hear the PhD explain as he goes but:
these are a few:
Persians conquer Judea 539-332B.C.
Zoroastrianism
-War of good god vs evil god (Satan)
-bad people burn in hell good people wait in heaven
-river of fire that burns everything including hell (except good people) Jewish Apocalypticism comes from Zoroastrianism.
-new better world created in it's place
-all good people resurrected by god to live in the new world - this was not in Judaism before this and is probably the most important concept taken from the Persians
-general concepts of the afterlife
-before Zoro the Jewish god was the reason for everything, including evil and negative happenings, after the Jews encountered Zoro evil was placed on the "evil" god or bad god - Satan
there are many other concepts Carrier speaks about in different lectures.
After the invasion Judaism emerged with these concepts. The Jews took their story of a fallen angel and made him the "bad" god. So that is a good example of religious Syncretism where they made their own personal evil god to oppose the good god.
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