How did the bible fables get started? (page 2)

sparky1

Fables, stories and myths are important for some human beings in order to assign meaning in life and to their lives. Early man and the Bible writers were no exception.

"A myth is a way of making sense in a senseless world. Myths are narrative patterns that give significance to our existence. Whether the meaning of existence is only what we put into life by our own individual fortitude, as Sartre would hold, or whether there is a meaning we need to discover, as Kierkegaard would state, the result is the same: myths are our way of finding this meaning and significance." - ROLLO MAY

OnTheWayOut

They only had story-telling way back. By the time they learned how to write it down, the stories were some real whoppers. Think Genesis and the book of Enoch, but also all mythologies had huge stories.

I think, just as we know today's movies are fictional, people tended to know stories were fiction back then. But that was somehow forgotten as the telling went on. Imagine some of our modern "based on a true story" or "inspired by actual events" movies becoming the accepted history in the future...or even worse- pure fiction is believed to be true. Think ABRAHAM LINCOLN- VAMPIRE SLAYER.

Let me indulge on another silly idea you WILL hear. There were baby animals and just dinosaur eggs on the ark. Or there were actually 3 arks, but the tale got simplified. One ark landed at Australia and the ark with dinosaus sank in some battle of faith. The third had Noah and the animals of Europe, Asia, Africa....and they walked a land bridge to the Americas. Can you see a great story-telling out of that?

Diogenesister

@Crazyguy wow very interesting! Great post.

Crazyguy

Oh thought of another one, the Sampson story has similarities to the stories of Hercules. Both slay the same kind of animal with their bare hands and both capture the same animal in another part of the story. It’s clear many of the stories are not the exact same but have similar elements to them of older stories.

Magnum I can’t give you a specific book I have found these from researching and reading many different books.

Magnum

Crazyguy - OK, thanks. I kind of figured that might be the case.

Giordano- thanks for that link.

Vidiot

re. sparky1's post...

Very true.

I think one of the big problems was, surprisingly enough, the scientific method.

It did such a better job explaining the world around us that mythology became virtually discredited, to the point where the word "myth" became almost synonymous with "lie".