What biblical myths and stories have appeared in other religious texts that pre date it ?

What biblical myths and stories have appeared in other religious texts that pre date it ?

YHWH slaying leviathan. it's in the Baal Cycle

The whole creation story is partially the Enuma Elish
The Adam and Eve story appeared in Ugarit
The story of Noah is a retelling of the Epic of Atrahasis
Many of the themes are heavily influenced by themes from Mesopotamia and Canaan
Some stuff from the Bible can be found in Gilgamesh
Monotheism probably started in Egypt with Akhenaten, and since Moses is an Egyptian name, there's definitely a case to be made for an Egyptian influence
Finally, the world as a cosmic battle between good and evil can already be found in Zoroastrianism

>The whole creation story is partially the Enuma Elish

I don't remember the part in Genesis with multiple gods who are engaged in cosmic warfare and create the universe out of the corpse of a slain deity. . .

No, some stuff does differ wildly, but the fact that first light, then the firmament, then the land, then the stars, then life, that specific steps of creation shows that there was definitely some influence

In both the world is formed from the primordial waters, in the enuma elish you just have to kill them first

That's a really oversimplified claim. For example, the fact that neighbouring cultures had a story about a terrible flood, does it mean that the story was copied or are those remnants of a collective memory of a great flood with different spin put to it by different cultures? Or maybe both stories are based on even more ancient tale? Each of these ''similarities'' is in the eye of the beholder. Some seem as a legit deconstruction (especially the Gilgamesh vs Moses basket in the river tale) but others are just minimalistic fags trying to make a point where there is no point to be made.

>that first light, then the firmament, then the land, then the stars, then life

Have you ever read the Enuma Elish? That's not how it explains it at all.

No in Genesis the world is created out of nothing; ex nihilo.

>No in Genesis the world is created out of nothing; ex nihilo
i think you should reread genesis. God first hovers above the waters before he ever says let there be light. when he makes the earth and the sky he does so by dividing the primordial waters into two halves

Not OP, but which parts or stories of the OT are new and/or original?

>בְּרֵאשִׁית, בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים, אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם, וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ.

>בְּרֵאשִׁית

>בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים הָאָרֶץ

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>In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

>In the beginning

>God created the earth

Keep reading boi:

>And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

But in all these cases they show that the bible is not the original incarnation.

The earth was already created in v.1 "in the beginning" out of nothing.

that's obviously just the introduction to what happens immediately afterwards. just because the english "created" seems to specifically signify ex nihilo to you doesn't make it so. the heaven isn't even "created" until day two so if we take this first verse to literally be an action separate from what comes later it makes no sense:

>6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. 7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. 8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

notice it isn't even named heaven until day 2

The Hebrew verb בָּרָא means to create and no the heaven and the earth were created out of nothing "in the beginning."

>בְּרֵאשִׁית, בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים, אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם, וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ.

"The firmament" in verses 6-7 is הָרָקִיעַ which is different from "the heavens" הַשָּׁמַיִם in verse 1.

Some myths were common to the ancient mideast and some are just an attempt by scholars to show similarities because disproving a paradigm is the way you get a name for yourself.

>disproving a paradigm is the way you get a name for yourself.
Probably true. But no matter the motivation, the paradigm is done for.

>The Hebrew verb בָּרָא means to create and no the heaven and the earth were created out of nothing "in the beginning."
and i can "create" a sword out of iron. create doesn't specifically mean creating out of nothing. also you are being so fucking fallacious. you compared the words for the heavens to firmament when the firmament is called heaven. of course the hebrew word for heaven and firmament is different!

A lot of Old Testament stuff came from Mesopotamic and Cananean mythology, including both creation stories in Genesis (creation by word and creation by dust); the Flood, the presence of antediluvian giants, the idyllic stuation of the Primordial Couple being broken by the arrival of evil, all that stuff
Also, not exactly predating it and not a myth or a story, but the Sapiential Books, especially Eclessiastes and the Ben Sira Wisdom are quite influenced by Hellenistic thought.
Jesus himself was read a subverted take on the archetype of the Redeemer, especially on the Jewish Messiah.

Both the heavens and the firmament were created out of nothing.

In the original Egyptian version maybe, but the Hebrew version is unclear on this point.

The Hebrew is clear: God spoke and it was so.

Basically most of Mesopotamian and Semitic myths were stolen/adapted by the Jews when writing the Old Testament. They saw the myths of plagues, floods and river-basket babies and reinterpreted them to fit their god.

Sure, but where did the waters come from? Who is God talking to in Genesis, himself? The >implication is that Yahweh merely ordered reality, as Marduk did, rather than actually creating reality ex nihilo.

>stolen

That's not how it works. Yes, the kikes adapted myths from other cultures to their own ends, but this is called "cultural transmission", not "stealing". The Greeks likewise took heavy "inspiration" from Mesopotamia, but you wouldn't call Herakles "stolen from Sumer".

God made the waters out of nothing and He's speaking to us.

No, the waters are already there. And why / how could he possibly be talking to us before Adam was created?

>does it mean that the story was copied or are those remnants of a collective memory of a great flood
Well, there was no great flood, so you can scratch that out.

And these similarities are really hard to deny. One of them had to be copied from the other. The Epic of Gilgamesh being attested a few thousand years earlier by the most prestigious state in the Near East kinda tips the scale in its direction as being the original.

The waters were on the earth which God created in the beginning and He knew we would study what He said even before we were made.

>there was no great flood

>implying

He isn't speaking to us.
He speaks to the celestial entities by his side.

>In the beginning Elohim created heaven and earth.

Elohim (Hebrew: אֱלֹהִים) is a grammatically plural noun for "gods" or "deity" in Biblical Hebrew.

No mention of creating waters tho. Even if you make the autistic claim that "in the beginning" is anything but an introductory paraphrase, he created the heavens and the earth, NOT the waters.

He's not implying it, it's a fact that there was no global flood.

The paradigm changes each generation. At first it was about viewing the bible as pretty historic. The next generation showed the inconsistencies but went to far with it. Now the trend is going in the way of showing that some of the things that were ''disproved'' were actually true. And so it goes. Each time we get closer to the historical truth but some just overdo it.

There was no time before the beginning and the earth was created before the waters.

>the earth was created before the waters.

So you keep saying, but the Bible doesn't say this at all.

The universe was a cosmic ocean, just like in the Enuma Elish and Near Eastern mythology in general. Why do you think God flooded the Earth to return it to its pre-creation state?

The earth is created in v.1 and only God existed before the beginning.

The universe has been the heavens and the earth from the beginning.

>God existed before the beginning.

Then time didn't come into existence with the earth, did it?

Time started at the beginning.

The Bible makes no mention of this, just as it makes no mention of the creation of the waters.

Proofs?

You think the Earth is the same age as the universe?

Time cannot exist before the beginning because otherwise it would have already begun.

>בְּרֵאשִׁית, בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים, אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם, וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ

Yes but the earth we live on is not all of the earth.

Great parts of the book of Genesis have predating versions in the Sumerian mythology, like the tale of the creation of the world and the great flood. Other parts are common themes in old myths. Some parts in the bible resemble for example old forms of oaths against rebellion.

>Time cannot exist before the beginning because otherwise it would have already begun.

Gibberish. Time can exist for as long as it likes when you have a god.

God is outside of time and started time at the beginning.

Again, you have nothing to support this claim. Nothing in the Bible, and nothing in logic, either. Like the waters, you are willfully misreading the text.

Only God is before the beginning and as soon as time began it is the beginning.

This isn't what the text says. I don't care about your fanfic.

The text begins at the beginning.

Not of time, since god acts without first creating time. Not of the waters, because god moves upon them before (without) creating them.

I think you're being trolled at this point homie

God's action begins time at the beginning of everything.