mark9950

I have seen for this board that the bible may and probably were written and put together from different religions.

If this is the case than that would explain anomolies and contradictions.

Now is there any information from history about the ancient religions that existed through time from the beginning of civilized man.

Mageth

Yes and no; bits and pieces here and there, stories and myths passed down in one form or another or deduced from archaeological evidence. Some ancient religions we know quite a bit about, for others we only have a few clues. Many have undoubtedly been lost.

For the bible, the most important prior or concurrent religions are perhaps those of Sumer, Babylon (heavily based on Sumerian myths), Egypt, and even Greece, bits and pieces of each of which are arguably melded into the Judeo-Christian mythologies. And perhaps other tribal religions that have been lost in the mists of time. For Christianity and the New Testament, of course, Judaism and the Old TEstament is the prime source.

Evangelion

Yes, it's all true. Judaism and Christianity are the only religions in the world which are not original. Everybody else managed to come up with their own religions all by themselves, but Judaism and Christianity scoured the globe for every single myth ever created, and forged them into two separate religions.

Slavik91

Having fun with your strawmen?

Mageth

Yes, it's all true. Judaism and Christianity are the only religions in the world which are not original. Everybody else managed to come up with their own religions all by themselves, but Judaism and Christianity scoured the globe for every single myth ever created, and forged them into two separate religions.

Strawmen is right. In my post, I gave the Babylonian religion as another example. The fact is, many if not all of the world's religions have borrowed from other contemporary or predecessor religions - Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Mormonism being other notable examples.

DrJim

Don't forget the 'Canaanites'!

For some info on the mythological texts found at Ugarit in Northern Syria, you can check out the following sites

Ugaritic mythology

http://www-oi.uchicago.edu/OI/IS/PAR.../NN_Win02.html

I hope you can link directly to them, I tried to use the 'insert hyperlink button, but I don't know if it is working.


The ancient Hebrew / Israelite religious thought shared a number of features, especially in terms of modes of describing and thinking about the divine, with the Canaanites. The city of Ugarit was destroyed in teh late second millenium bce, that is, quite some time before the Israelite kingdoms. The Bible, of course, is in many places a direct polemic against the worship of the Canaanite deities, especially Baal.

Greg2003

While the earliest dominant religions that impacted the emergence of judaism were egyptian, sumerian and babylonian, to understand why the old testament looks the way it does today the single most important religious influence is zoroastrianism. The Persian empire essentially wrote the bible in the form that we have it today and the dominant religion of that empire was zoroastrianism. The heaven and hell, angels and demons, and the tedious purity codes all come from zoroastrianism.

lpetrich

Let's not forget Islam. It contains lots of borrowed stuff.

The Kaaba in Mecca, with its Black Stone, is very likely such a borrowing -- the Black Stone is one of several notable sacred stones.

The Koran has lots of Biblical stuff in it, and also some stuff from rabbinical Judaism like a story of Abraham challenging idolatry.

And much of it may have been translations from some earlier Syriac versions. According to this view, some things were gained in translation, like white raisins becoming houris.

Greg2003

I would be very interested to see a discussion board dedicated just to islam. The truth about how the koran was composed is very murky. I would love to learn more about this. Some of the best critical scholars where early muslim intellectuals.

Mageth

Greg2003:
While the earliest dominant religions that impacted the emergence of judaism were egyptian, sumerian and babylonian, to understand why the old testament looks the way it does today the single most important religious influence is zoroastrianism. The Persian empire essentially wrote the bible in the form that we have it today and the dominant religion of that empire was zoroastrianism. The heaven and hell, angels and demons, and the tedious purity codes all come from zoroastrianism.

I knew I was forgetting an important one.