Did Genesis Copy Sunmerian, Babylonian, and Egyption Creation Accounts?

I’ve addressed this before, but I’ll say it again:

The Bible only appears to make such clear distinctions in English and by ignoring the fact that it was written as ancient literature. Ancient literary types found in Genesis especially mix poetry, myth, history and other types because they had literary types that don’t fit the ones you list, and those partake of two or more of the ‘flavors’ you list simultaneously.

As for the “research above”, to be blunt that book relies on people who are at best not credible.

Wow – I haven’t encountered the “God was learning” trope for… over forty years! Is that silliness still around?

I’ve never encountered any “‘inspiration of God’ dilemma” with theistic evolution before; in fact evolution points strongly to the glory of God. Care to explain?

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All truth being God’s truth. It does seem to be a bit arrogant to think that ancient people and pagans could not have known truth, and of course that goes on today. Just as non-Christians can produce beautiful art and music, and write prose and poetry that expresses truth. I think that if you look at the New Testament, you can see influence from Greek philosophy. That does not make it less true.

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so what i am hearing here is that you are using the writings of a Christian to support the idea that paganism wrote the scriptures?

If you go back and re read my post in response to beaglelady, you will recall that my statement was that Abraham, Melchizadek, and Job likely lived around the same time, however, all three were located hundreds of km apart. There is no chance they had any links with each other prior to their stories in the Bible.

Job - Uz which is east of the Red Sea
Melchizadek - Salem (Israel/Jordan region)
Abram - ur of the Chaldees (Mesopotamia)

What the above means is that Melchizzadek and Job were gentiles…they were not Jewish. There is no way that Abrahams story or any of his subsequent theology was copied from either of the other two and yet they followed the same God he did. Not only did they follow that God, but they held almost identical beliefs to Abraham about things such as Creation, the Fall, and in particular (and this is the most important aspect) the sacrificial system.

All three disconnected inviduals sacrificed to the one true God in Heaven. They sacrificed for the identical reason that Cain and Abel did in Genesis chapter 4!

So the reality is, the Jewish belief did not come from paganism. Given that the bible speaks of paganism and its corruptions of the plan of salvation so early in its history, and given how well the bible remains consistent with the varying writers books regarding the plan of salvation, it is a difficult position to support the claim of plagiarism. There was no internet in those days and the vast distances and time involved between writers of the various books…a discrepency/ or lie would have easily been exposed by now, however this is not the case…as the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Isaiah scroll (100B.C) have shown.

The YEC claim was the primary thing that drove students who arrived as Christians away from the faith because it is so obviously false – and they had never been nurtured in the actual faith enough to pass through that trial. Indeed most of the YEC-believing students I knew were far more trained in YECism than in knowing Christ. I like what a Campus Crusade for Christ director said on the matter once: “We’re here to preach Jesus, not to try to prove the Bible – if people get to know Jesus, proving the Bible will take care of itself”.

BTW, that’s one of the wisest things Augustine ever put in writing.

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You have demonstrated the enormity of your theological, biblical and philosophical capabilities quite well.

Isnt this quoting a statement which dissagrees with the premise here? Isnt the following supportive of the philosophical rather than the scientific?

if people get to know Jesus, proving the Bible will take care of itself”.

I again repeat what Christ Himself stated on this topic…

Luke 18: 24Seeing the man’s sadness,c Jesus said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! 25Indeed, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

I believe it is a mistake for us to claim that unless ourscience is agreeable, our faith is lost. Wouldnt this be the opposite of what Christ Himself taught?

Mark 10: “Let the little children come to Me, and do not hinder them! For the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. 15Truly I tell you, anyone who does not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.”

EDIT

I don’t come to this forum seeking salvation…no one will find that here. there is only one place where salvation can be found, the Bible.

This forum is a place for obtaining knowledge and discussing our interests and faith. However, it focuses so heavily on Science that the faith part seems to get enveloped in a scientific cloud (perhaps I’m just being biased here and i mean no disrespect).

Can this forum strengthen or weaken our faith? Of course.

Can this forum bring people to seek God? Absolutely.

What i find really interesting is that when the prophet Elijah was in the cave, and the Lord told him to come out to the entrance, Elijah did not find God in the thunder, the wind, or the earthquake, instead it was a still small voice saying “what are you doing here Elijah!”

That is not what he said. Again you are showing your inability to read well.

What you are saying is that unless science agrees with your belief, your salvation is lost. That is an evil distortion of the truth.

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I think when one reads a little more deeply into the various posts made by individuals here, its very clear that from the perspective of Science YECism is bad (and that comes from reading between the lines on the statement “YECism was the primary thing that drove students”…).

If we dig into what YECs believe:

  1. that the world was created in Six days by an almighty creator who is eternal and omnipotent
  2. Sin came into this world, corrupted it by tricking humanity into disobedience, and death is a result of Sin
  3. God, humbled Himself and lived amongst us, died a physical death at the hand of His own creation in order to pay the price for sin
  4. “This same Jesus will return in the manner in which you have seen him go up into heaven” and those who are alive and who believe on Him will meet together with those who are dead in the air and return to Heaven with Him
  5. And a new heavens and a new earth will be made for the former things have passed away

Are you able to find anything in the above that Christians should take issue with and that may detract from their faith?

Is there anything in the fundamentals of YECism that disagrees with the statements Jesus made "suffer the little children to come unto me…"unless one has the faith of a child, he cannot inherit the kingdom of God?

Which is why YECism drives people to abandond their faith, since they were taught that if there are any "errors’ In Genesis then the whole Bible is wrong.
They’re just following what their church(es) taught them.

No, they’re chased away from scripture because that’s what their churches taught them: if there’s an “error” in Genesis, even one, then the whole Bible is false.

That’s not even Christianity any more, so in a way they’re not leaving the faith because their churches never taught them the faith! It’s the same (literally) damned (in the theological sense) error the Roman Catholic church made when they forced scripture to fit another human philosophy, Aristotelianism. All that YECism is, is forcing the Bible to fit scientific materialism.

Christ is the center of faith, not anyone’s interpretation of Genesis, yet I have seen over and over and over preachers pounding the pulpit insisting that if Genesis isn’t scientifically correct then the Bible is false. Those preachers are not Christian by any stretch of the word.

But their preachers proclaim that the Bible has to be scientifically true or it isn’t true at all. So when students merely taking the required low-level science courses for whatever major they chose, they find that there are in fact “errors” in Genesis, and so they follow what their preachers taught them and abandon the faith.

Yes. The more I study, the more I recognize that YECism is inherently antiChrist because it has a different theological center and thus a different Gospel.

Every church junior high group should be taught that quote from Augustine, along with a point from an Orthodox priest I knew: if you aren’t talking about Jesus, you’re not doing theology.

That’s easy: they insist that the Bible has to be scientifically accurate or it isn’t true.

That’s a tenet of scientific materialism, not of scripture.

No that is not at all what YECism says. That is what mainstream secular science claims.

YECism is stating that the catastrophic nature of the flood was such that what appears to be old is in fact not. And they are finding evidence that is supportive of YEC claims on the age of the earth (which are also supported directly by the genealogies in scripture!)

What evolution does is force a discrediting of the genealogies and any other scripture which suggests or directly supports young earthism!

I fret myself because of the agony that so-called believers propounding YECism put my brothers and sisters from my university days through – brothers and sisters who came to God and eventually to Christ because they saw in evolution a system established by a true, exalted Designer. They have to listen over and over to claims that “evolution is a tool of the devil” and “evolutionism is atheist”, which to them may as well be people spitting in the face of our Lord.

YECism deliberately divides the Body of Christ and inflicts pain on a multitude of Christians.

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The interesting thing about Greek philosophy and the New Testament is that when it shows up it’s almost always being used to negate something from Greek philosophy.

I fully accept and agree that the perception could lean this way, however, i do not believe that is the intended purpose of the claims of YECism. The claim of YECism according to my understanding is that Scientific interpretation should align with the historicity of the bible.

Do you have a problem aligning science with history? I don’t mainly because that history dates back as far as written documentation exists and even beyond.

For me personally, the real problem is that if we start to tear out parts of the historicity of the Bible timeline, it truly destroys its theology. Some here may not appreciate this, but I come from a very theological denomination and family and removing important historical information from the bible by turning its history into an allegory destroys theology particularly the reason for the incarnation and death of Christ.

Christ specifically died a physical death for sin exactly as described in Genesis Ch 3 and in many subsequent historical writings/books of the bible.

The Old Testament Sanctuary Service was given as an explanation of that process. Interestingly enough, this same sacrificial system was used by Cain and Abel…so it was not knew to Gods people. It was in place thousands of years before the Exodus.

The entire sanctuary service (given to Moses by God) cannot be an allegory. If we turn it into one because of a problem with a literal Creation account, it turns Christ into an allegory.

If the story of Christ becomes an allegory, it turns the entire bible into an ellaborate fictional fairytale

The reality is that the first Genesis Creation account follows the Egyptian creation account pretty much item for item. So either the writer lifted the Egyptian version and used it to teach some truth, or the Egyptians just happened to have almost everything right. Either way, the writer lifted from paganism.

The reality is also that the Tower of Babel story matches events in the city of Eridu except for the order of events and the lesson drawn, which almost certainly means the writer took the story from the pagans.

The Dead Sea scrolls don’t support your point; what they do support is that the Jews were very, very good at copying things, which in turns supports that they were very, very good at passing things on orally.

I don’t see your problem with biblical writers lifting things from pagan sources; given that in order to exist everything has to express something about the character of Christ, it’s basically impossible for cultures to not have something right! And given that Paul cited Greek poets to point to God when he was on Mars Hill, he plainly agrees with that point.

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He meant people will stop worrying about proving the Bible because Jesus doesn’t need the help. If you have Jesus at the center, whether or not Genesis is scientifically accurate becomes irrelevant.

Then why do you introduce YEC material as evidence for anything? Their entire premise is that the Bible has to be 100% scientifically and historically accurate. That;'s the reason so many university students walked away from the church: they were taught YECism, and YECism told them that if there were any errors then the Bible was false.

Nope – that’s actually contrary to the Bible!

The only place salvation can be found is Jesus. One does not (especially these days) come to Jesus because of the Bible, one comes to the Bible because of Jesus.

This is what so many, many street “evangelists” don’t get: quoting the Bible to people just gets them laughed at because the Bible only means something once you’ve come to Christ. They should throw out every Bible quote and Bible terminology and talk to people on a level they’ll understand.

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I’ve been to fifty or more churches where YECism is held to, and I didn’t hear those things anywhere near as much as I heard YEC rhetoric, and I can’t think of any of them where it was pointed out that if YECism is wrong, Jesus is still Savior; what I did hear was that if there is even one scientific “error” in the Bible then the whole Bible is wrong.

I come to Genesis via the Hebrew first and foremost and it;s because of that original text that I see that YEcism is bad: it not only lies about science, it lies about the Bible!
It’s from the perspective of scripture that YECism is bad; science could care less. But YECism boils down to this: the Bible can only be true if it’s all scientifically true. So when students learn that Genesis 1 cannot be taken literally, they are doing exactly what YECism preaches when they walk away from the church and the faith.

I did a historical study and found where the ideas behind YECism come from, and they come out of the scientific ‘enlightenment’ where the idea that truth only comes from science. That idea was modified only slightly to the proposition that in order to be true a thing has to be 100% scientifically correct. Until that notion permeated the church, no one really worried about science and the Bible; most scientists were Christians and had no problem with an ancient universe or ancient Earth or the Bible being a bit off in scientific terms because they understood that the Bible is not to be measured by science.
But measuring it by science is exactly what YECism does – and that is destructive of faith because it has a wrong definition of truth and a wrong center.

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I think we are discussing ideas from unrelated perspectives. Are you arguing for paganism or for the inerrancy of the Christian bible?

It appears to me that you do not accept the Christian theology of biblical inerrancy if indeed you make the claim biblical writers (very ancient writers btw) copied their ideas from paganism.

A couple of considerations that are very problematic in your theory…

  1. The plan of salvation is depicted across the entire bible (both testaments)
  2. The bible consists of books written by at least 35 different individuals who in many cases, had no contact with each other
  3. The theology of the bible across its pages is very very consistent
  4. External references support the biblical narrative timeline (ie its historical writings and figures are supported by outside sources)

give the above, how do you reconcile the idea that paganism was capable of being used to present such an accurate and consistent theology with writers who had no contact with each other? (remember most of the bible did not exist as a single book…it was a series of scrolls for the old testament and the new testament was brought together long after the death of Christ).

The above is gives the indication that the consistency of the Bible theology across its pages is irrelevant…it would be interesting to see some scholarly support for that view.

I know of one YEC that left the faith because of all the falsehoods from YECism about physical reality, but remarkably came back, understanding that evolution does not preclude God. He would be an exception to the usual. I also know of an angry YEC father and his apparently permanently estranged and angry atheist son, in a heartbreaker of a situation.

In my youth, I was a YEC too, but after enough education in the physical sciences I became an OEC about four decades ago when I heard Hugh Ross on the radio in an unusual and providential circumstance… this was before RTB was even founded. I then learned that ID was not scientific, but what probably was most significant was learning about neutral drift and the neutral theory of evolution and that evolution does produce information and complexity.

Kidney cancer and the series of multiple remarkable providences surrounding that episode demonstrating that God is sovereign over the timing and placing of mutations in DNA was not a surprise, but it was another determinant in my acceptance of evolutionary science. So I am thankful that the journey had no trauma, and that the most important people in my life are accepting of it too, including and especially my wife.

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