So there are no veiled pagan stories in the Bible for you to accept for their figurative value?
I took Western History in undergrad and remember that the teacher taught conjecture quite confidently as factāeg, the Hebrews got their belief in a single God from the Egyptiansāwhen more recent readings seem to say that the Hebrews never even came from Egypt (Kenton Sparks)āI just think itās really dangerous to try to say confidently that thereās a clear pagan reason. The Bible didnāt evolve without influence, true, but being too certain of what is certainly a very unique experience (a nomad tribe developing a monotheistic culture) implies there could be something quite miraculous about it. I am conflating some examples, but itās lateāIāll try to think this out more clearly.
Lewis on Fern Seed and Elephants seems an interesting resource:
These men ask me to believe they can read between the lines of old texts; the evidence is their obvious inability to read (in any sense worth discussing) the lines themselves. They claim to see fern-seed and canāt see an elephant ten yards away in broad daylight.ā
I remember reading that he laughed at how people analyzed why he wrote his own books. While I donāt think Geisler is objective in many ways, hereās a quote from Lewis on one of his pages. Iām working through it yet. Iād like your thoughts.
http://normangeisler.com/fernseeds-elephants/
But I want to humbly say that I donāt knowāyou know far more than I. Someone just introduced me to Henri Nouwen, whose quotes are striking me as profound. So, itās not for knowledge alone, but for mutual support, that we are to strive to interact by Godās grace:
"When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.
Henri Nouwen
I apologize if I ever concentrate so much on knowledge that I forget to support you and others on this discourse.
I havenāt said anything about whether I think the story is literal history. Iām not sure my interpretive task is to always be sure about the extent to which a story is literal or figurative. Iāve gleamed insights from this story since I was a child with (in the words of Lewis Carroll) āpure unclouded brow and dreaming eyes of wonder.ā I think children often have better access to the teachings of biblical narratives because they are less crippled by hyper-empiricism.
If you were going to suggest a part of the Bible that seems, more than others, to be a likely pagan story co-opted and āJudaizedā by the Bible scribes, which story would you recommend?