Understanding Ancient Near East influence on the Bible, and Past Secular Movements

Faith & Science Conversation
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I have a bit of a tough question that has come about from past discussions with friends of mine as well as academic study: what are we to make of the supposed ancient near east religions in the Bible? The Epic of Gilgamesh, for example, pre-dates the Bible and some elements of the story can be seen in the Genesis creation stories. One of my close friends (I’m not entirely sure if this is factual or not) claimed that the Abrahamic religions were formed in opposition to the matriarchal religions that formed in close proximity (I.e. religions that worshiped “Mother Earth” were replaced by the religions that had “The Father” and “The Son”). An Intro to Humanities course I’m taking has also tried to point out some of these early concepts (those bits of the chapter of study below).

On top of this, my course also makes some references to movements away from religion in the past, such as in the Enlightenment. What am I to make of past attempts to move toward secular goals?

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  • I’m confused. It looks to me like your post is about three different issues.
    • 1st Issue: Question 1: Did biblical texts emerge in an ANE cultural environment and sometimes interact with older Near Eastern stories? That is a normal historical-literary question.
    • 2nd Issue: Question 2: Were the Abrahamic religions basically a reaction against nearby “matriarchal” religions?
      That is a broad civilizational claim from your friend, and it is not established by the textbook excerpts you posted. The screenshots shown are mostly about Christianity’s later interactions with Greek, Roman, Jewish, and philosophical currents.
    • 3rd issue: Question 3: How should Christians think about historical secular movements like the Enlightenment? That is yet another issue, again separate from whether Genesis has ANE parallels.
  • The first question I have is: which of those three questions do you want a response to first?
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What are your text book sources, please? Titles, authors and publishers please? Sources (and what is behind them) matter.

Also, what other background do you have related to the history and/or development of Christianity? History of the church? Important people in the development of Christianity?

If it has only been at church you will definitely be dealing with your own feelings of culture shock.

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