plagiarism in the bible- what I have learnt part one

by purrpurr 13 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  purrpurr

  I have recently been studying the myths and legends of other pre- Jewish cultures. Such as Babylonian, Egyptian and Greek. These stories and beliefs are all pre dating the writing of the Jewish Torah and the new testament.

  What I have discovered over and over again are not only similarities but whole concepts and tales that are almost identical to those found in the so called inspired word of god.

  When you consider that the bible freely admits that the Jews were assimilated into both the Babylonian and Egyptian culture at points in their history it becomes easy to see were their ideas and stories came from.

  In short the bible is a mid mash of flagrantly plagiarised stories and myths. It makes for very interesting reading as a course of study I highly recommend it. Its especially good reading material during the meetings! I mean reading on a tablet of course... Whose to know the difference?
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  Crazyguy

  I am currently reading the book, The Chaldean account of Genesis by George Smith. really good book and it goes over all the myths in the bible that were found to be written thousands of years before the Jews even existed. The creation myth of Ziusudra is the most fascinating to me because it covers and talk about the Watchers which were the gods that came down and mated with woman to create "great men of renown" (the nephilim) of the bible as well as some other good stuff I have not found written in any other book. Its also amazing to discover the Evolution of the god the Sumerians first called Hea and as time went on he became known as Ea, Enki, El, Cronos, Satan, and is part of the personality of the god we all know as Jehovah.
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  steve2

  The more I read entire passages from the Bible, the more I am absolutely astonished I once believed it was the inerrant word of God. To accept it is the word of God requires the believer to shut down their thinking ability and become unquestioning in their embrace of Scripture.

  Without shutting down our thinking abilities we see so-called "Holy Scripture" for what it is: A hodge podge of old stories that borrowed heavily from local myths and that reflected the morality and thinking of the time. Little wonder, the ability - or lack thereof - to think determines the quality of one's faith and preparedness to quote chapter and verse as "of God".
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  Heaven

  purrpurr, it is an excellent activity to check into pre-Biblical history. I find not many religious people do. This is not a very intelligent move on their part. I also find many religious people do not even know the content of their own foundational holy book.

  At some point in the past, someone or a group of someones decided to trot this collection of (73 - apparently strikethrough isn't working on this site) 66 books out as 'the inerrant, true word of God'.

  It all goes downhill from there.
  
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  LisaRose

  Yeah, it's kind of deflating when you realize the bible, something you once believed was sacred and inspired by God, was just a collection of modern urban legends of the time.
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  BluesBrother

  . These stories and beliefs are all pre dating the writing of the Jewish Torah

  If I , for the sake of argument, were to put on my Dub advocate hat I would say that the other stories may pre date the compilation of the Torah or the writing of the Pentatuech - but they do not pre date the creation of the first man.

  A dub would say that Adam wrote the record at the time, Noah carried it through the flood with his own records of his time. They were preserved and passed down to Moses who compiled the books of Genesis to Dueteronomy... So who copied who?

  O K , I know that is far fetched and unprovable and I am not presenting it as an answer - but that is what they would say. I believe it is suggested in the "Insight" book
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  Bugbear

  I have read “history of Ideas and science” on an University level. And one of the understandings I found was that most of Bible content only is a repeating of older stories, sometimes distorted from old tales and explanations. Many of these stories has been found in cuneiform letters from the ancient Sumers. Even since we have been able to understand old Egyptian hieroglyphs (thanks to Champillion), we have been able to document our history down to 5400 years bc. This documentation is not a translation of old paper rolls that has been translated, transformed. Written again, translated, destroyed, reformed over and over…..

  They are actually written in original letters on stone……

  An idea of what makes the “wholly Bible” fallacy obvious, are the s.c. Parallel scriptures. The books of Chronicles, Kings, the books of Samuel and others are practically copies. You will find that many of the different chapters are identical. Sometimes they makes mistakes and mention another name than in the in the previous. If these books are run in a computer, you can immediately se the similarities, thus if you were using them in un University essay your examination will fail. You would probably be accused of fraud. And suspended from the university. Why is this obvious not holly scriptures, why do they repeat themselves on and on again.

  The obvious reasons are they were not written by god inspired men. They were written by copying men who were looking on older rolls. And these older rolls where not the only rolls, there were 100 of rolls with similar texts. The copyist did not understand that other versions of the text were stored in other synagogues. When Athanasius of Alexandria compiled the books of the bible, he could not see these obvious mistakes.

  If you would like to se more literature and Bible criticism, I would recommend as a starter SAB.

  or http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/

  Here you can see lots of commentary’s to Bible texts. God luck in your studies…

  Bugbear
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  Magnum

  purrpurr, you bring up a subject that I'm very interested in and plan on studying soon. Do you have any recommendations for books or other literature?

  I took note of the book Crazyguy mentioned.

  Bugbear, do you have any book recommendations? Anybody else?
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  Crazyguy

  I would read the book I mentioned above first, its great for setting of the table and will help show that the Jews just copied these stories then changed them to suit their own agenda. Then I would read The Bible Unearthed, by Israel Finkelstein. This book is an archaeology's understanding of what the real Israel and that area was all about and who the people of that area were really. Another one to get is the Egyptian book of the dead by Dr. Ogden Goelet and Dr. Raymondo Faulkner. This book has some of the best illustrations of the scroll and if you study it well you'll see that most of what we are taught in the NT about ones spirit going to heaven, our hearts conditions being judged and they idea of living in a paradise all come from this much older religion.

  In response to Brotherblues, its important to bring out to any JW that your talking to that these stories could be said to just be repeated orally down through Noah until finally written down by the Moses etc. Yet there is one major problem all the stories involved multiple gods and not just one and his adversary Satan. In fact this adversary we know as Satan is in fact the very God that saves Noah, is the creator with help of mankind and is the father of Adam. He is also the one who confuses the language, so you may want to ask the JW "Who's god are you really worshipping?"
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  Magnum

  Thanks, Crazyguy.