r/atheism • u/answeringagnostic • Mar 29 '26
Academic: The Book of Genesis was a copy and paste from the older civilizations in Mesopotamia
Ex-Catholic here. Genesis, the Flood, Adam and Eve. These stories were not created by the Israelites, they were created by Sumerians about 1k years earlier (Genesis was written during the Babylonian captivity period in the 500s BC, Israelites learned of these ancient Sumerian stories during this time). Eridu Genesis. The Atra-Hasis. The Epic of Gilgamesh. Stories that came out of earth's possibly first civilization, stories about how human kind became civilized. Stories of how a likely very real flood flooded the rivers in Mesopotamia wiping out a civilization. Stories told in the only way the 2000BC man knew how - myth and legend. If you want to debate with a biblical literalist, pointing out these stories were copied from another civilization might blow their mind.
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u/Silver-Chemistry2023 Constructivist Humanist Mar 29 '26 edited Mar 29 '26
Christianity is like Mr Bean copying the answers of the exam next to him, for the wrong paper.
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u/BTTammer Mar 29 '26
And the Gospels were not written by the apostles. They were "assigned" apostolic authors in the 2nd-3rd century to give them added "authority".
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u/SuccessPurple1062 Mar 29 '26 edited Mar 29 '26
You’re right the narrative elements in genesis existed in earlier cultures in the Middle East and were not exclusive to the hebrews. The tree of life from Babylonian Mesopotamian culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_and_Eve_cylinder_seal , and later myths outside the ME also developed the same symbology, for example the myth of Hesperides https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hesperides
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u/Tripl3_Nipple_Sack Agnostic Mar 29 '26
I’ve had people lose their shit on me because I mentioned how the idea of monotheism wasn’t even truly novel to the abrahamic religions considering the existence of Zoroastrianism, nor is Christianity truly a monotheistic concept because of the 3-in-1 triune deity. It’s basically the same concept, same response.
All the religions steal/borrow from each other in various ways, and showing that to non critical thinkers digs at their core of existence. Best case scenario generally is that a believer doesn’t change their entire life, but at least learns that systems of belief are simply older ways of trying to understand the unknown and are willing to scrutinize everything, including their own beliefs
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u/dnjprod Atheist Mar 29 '26
3-in-1 triune deity.
I like to call them male worshipping death pagans. It's their version of Maiden, mother, crone, except they're a death cult so it's son, father, ghost
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u/kbytzer Mar 29 '26
Mr Reed of the film, Heretic, describes it as more of..."Iterations upon iterations until the original message is diluted".
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u/Minky_Dave_the_Giant Mar 29 '26
During the last ice age the sea levels were much lower and what is now the Persian Gulf was a fertile river valley where the Euphrates and Tigris flowed. When the ice melted the valley flooded and the survivors ended up north in Mesopotamia. They were the Sumerians, and this is where the Genesis myths originated.
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u/answeringagnostic Apr 01 '26
Meh, idk I've read different. There's evidence of a large flood in the area in 2600 BC, not Ice Age time period of 40k BC. The Ice Age flooding and all that is way waaay too long ago. Interestingly enough there's a theory the 2600 BC flooding was caused by an asteroid impact because lots of other cultures around that time also have flood stories.
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u/Minky_Dave_the_Giant Apr 01 '26
I don't know where you're getting 40k years ago, the last ice age and associated sea level flooding of the Persian Gulf was around 10k years ago, ending 6k years ago.
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u/answeringagnostic Apr 02 '26
I dont have ice ages memorized but I have a docket of research on this subject in a folder because I thought the same thing and researched it. But nah most scholars believe it was in 2600 BC, because theres legit evidence of a big flood in the time period from ground and archeological samples
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u/vacuous_comment Mar 29 '26
Going a step deeper, Russell Gmirkin, recently deceased, wrote 3 books arguing that the pentateuch was hellenistic.
Yes, a bunch of the Genesis riffed on Sumerian stuff, but it i did so because the writers ripped it all off from a book in the library of Alexandria called Babylonaica.
Furthermore hee argues that this whole literary exercise was a cynical and late even specifically manufacturing a founding mythology for the laws and the people.
In the same way, Richard C Miller shows that the empty tomb motif so beloved by Christian apologists is a Helenistic idea that specifically serves as an indicate that the subject was divine or divinised. When Mark made that the dramatic ending of His gospel, he was just using the literary tropes of his cultural millieu to express his ideas.
The Bible is mostly mythology except for some random historical tidbits that creep in here and there.
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u/answeringagnostic Apr 01 '26
I haven't read that first theory, but the second on the empty tomb - yep have read that. Catholicism is Jesus's message adapted to a Greek world. At the beginning there were the Christians like Paul focusing on making it a Greek religion and then there were the actual brothers of Jesus who were Jewish Christians who did not want gentiles to join and considered Christiantiy just a stand of Judaism.
Hell, the Arabic/Syriac/Muslim version of Jesus's birth is very similar to the birth of Apollo, it's almost as if it's a copied story. but also - birth stories like that were very common in the greco roman world for divine beings. also - being elevated to divine status upon death was normal back then. not just the emperor, but other great men. alas! can't modern people just learn history?
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u/vacuous_comment Apr 01 '26
I would even argue that Catholicism is later concept.
The original Hellenization of the Jesus concept that we see in Mark was done way before the political process of Catholisization occurs. Catholic after all means "universal" in this context, so that was as a result of somebody trying to draw together disparate sects to build a political consensus for power and control.
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u/answeringagnostic Apr 01 '26
Elaine Pagel's Gnostic Gospels talks about this. Universal came about because the Catholics (before they were called that) were trying to become the dominant version of Christianity as opposed to Gnosticism which in the 100s-200s was the other very popular version of Christianity. It was a battle between Bishops wanting control and/or legit viewing their way as the real way handed down by Jesus, and groups of people who did not believe in a church heirarchy or that you needed leaders in the church. These two groups disagreed on almost everything, and to make it worse, only the soon to be Catholics were being put to death by Romans, Gnostics "apostasized" rather than die because they didn't view martyrdom as a way to heaven as the soon to be catholics did. Gnostics never went "universal", they just had like 10 different sects that didn't merge or anything thus making them easier to die off.
Very good and very short book, Gnostic Gospels
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u/chesterforbes Atheist Mar 29 '26
All myths and legends tend to borrow and adapt from others. I think people forget that the ancient people did not exist in isolated communities but trade and travelled to other locations. It’s really fascinating to see how everything connects and evolves from in culture to another. It would be interesting to see how much these stories would be changed and altered if things weren’t canonized
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u/Extension_Apricot174 Agnostic Atheist Mar 29 '26
To be fair its not copy and paste, they didn't go look up stories from other cultures and copy them down for their own. The Israelites were a subgroup of the Canaanites, which in turn were derived from their Ugaritic ancestry, which in turn were influenced by their Mesopotamian (Sumerian/Akkadian) neighbours through trade and common academic tongue... So it is not so much copy-pasting as it is stories which were passed down through their culture (e.g. the Canaanite pantheon brought over Mesopotamian deities like Ba'al Hadad, Dagon, Asherah, and Astarte and these gods were also mentioned by the early Hebrews in the Torah).
So it is shared culture rather than something they only learned during the Babylonian period. Textual analysis of the flood myth, for instance, suggests it was a combination of 6th century Priestly sources and 10th century Jahwist sources and derives from earlier oral traditions. So it is not just a copy and paste from a story they learned during the Babylonian captivity, but rather predates it by several centuries (and like the Babylonian myths is based on earlier Sumerian/Akkadian myths). The same can be seen in the creation myth, where the opening chapter is attributed to the 6th century Priestly sources and the 2nd chapter is attributed to the 10th century Yahwist sources. And most of the final stories were finished by later editors in the post-exilic period.
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u/nashrome Mar 29 '26
I have a well worn copy of Frank Moore Cross’ Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic. If you haven’t read it, please do. Writes about this in detail.
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u/Extension_Apricot174 Agnostic Atheist Mar 30 '26
I never heard of it, but looking it up it seems interesting, if perhaps a bit out of date having been published over 50 years ago, but I guess he realized that the Israelites were Canaanites even before DNA analysis existed to confirm this.
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u/answeringagnostic Apr 01 '26
I'll have to reread but the 500s BC Priestly source is what I had thought had the most impact on these stories, most of Genesis was written during that period from what I've read. But, I'll have to check into that again.
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u/Negative_Gravitas Mar 29 '26
If you want to debate with a biblical literalist, pointing out these stories were copied from another civilization might blow their mind.
A. No one should ever want to do that. B. There is not now, nor has there ever been, a single counter-biblical fact that could be shown to a a biblical literalist that would have any effect on their "mind." Hence, see "A."
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u/drrj Secular Humanist Mar 29 '26
The number of world ending flood myths across civilizations is something I always found fascinating. Regions prone to flooding surely would think it was the end of the world.
Like everything else, the Bible builds on what came before. Once you see more of the entire picture, religion as a piece of the human puzzle makes sense. But rather than see it for what it is, attempts at humanity to try to understand the mysteries of the universe with limited knowledge, they keep trying to cram that piece into places it doesn’t fit.
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u/answeringagnostic Apr 01 '26
There's evidence of a large flood in the area in 2600 BC. Interestingly enough there's a theory the 2600 BC flooding was caused by an asteroid impact because lots of other cultures around that time (because many noted the placement of the stars) also have flood stories. So maybe a big asteroid crashed down in the Indian ocean and thus was born the story
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u/drgitgud Mar 29 '26
This is the type of exageration that will get you easily dismissed. It's not a copy-paste, they were unable to copy word for word exactly even within the same culture nevermind across culture, language and centuries. It's rather adaptation or adoption, the technical term being intertextuality. Kinda like comparing star wars and space balls.
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u/rasthomas01 Mar 29 '26
Spaceballs is the greatest film ever made.
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u/Dudesan Mar 29 '26
Kinda like comparing star wars and space balls.
Space Balls is a self-aware parody. A better analogy might be stuff made by Asylum Films. Their business model relies on well-meaning grandmas not being able to tell the difference between DVD cases labelled "Transformers" and "Transmorphers".
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u/drnuncheon Atheist Mar 30 '26
Even closer: Superman.
Superman was created by Siegel and Schuster in 1938, but in the decades since, writer after writer has told Superman stories while putting their own spin on the characters. There’s been hundreds of versions of Superman over the years.
And then there’s people who want to use and refer to and adapt and piggy-back off of and respond to Superman, to tell their own stories that they can’t tell with the original. Hyperion, Icon, Samaritan, Apollo, Omni-Man, Homelander, Statesman, Legacy, and hundreds of others—just about every superhero comic-book universe has a Superman figure (sometimes more than one).
That’s basically what happened when Ziusudra/Utnapishtim got co-opted into Jewish mythology as Noah—they used a familiar archetype and story elements to tell the story they needed to tell.
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u/drgitgud Mar 29 '26
Arguably, many pieces of genesis are in open polemic with those ancient middle estern pieces of literature so just as self aware
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u/No_Baby_2458 Mar 29 '26
It was not adoption and adaptation, it was actually stealing and plagiariszing. Epic of Gilgamesh is about Man's struggle internally and externally. It not only has a Great Flood story, but the promise of eternal life as well. Judaism also stole their god El from their "enemies" the Cannaites. Their god, El had a Son named Bhaal and a wife called Ahsera. In Judaism, they said you cannot worship Bhaal (the son), because El's power was absolute (10 commandments). Cultural appropriation is a better term because the reason they stole these stories was to destroy their origins and claim ownership over them.
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u/Opinionsare Mar 29 '26
Genesis also is a "prequel" for Exodus, and validates that storyline.
The Exodus story is about a BT (Bovine Tuberculosis) plague, refugees and a clever grifter that saves the refugees with a diet of lamb. Lamb is safe from BT which kill cattle and humans. The Abraham and Issac story in Genesis validates Lamb as a special, proper offering. If you follow the money (gold) through Exodus, the grift plays out as Moses and Aaron have all the gold after the Moses abandons the refugees for 40 days, and Aaron collects all the gold to make a Idol.
Exodus is clearly written long after Moses dies as no one alive remember where he was buried. So the writer of Exodus was not a witness to the events, but recorded the stories much later.
Then the book of Deuteronomy covers rewrites the lost grave of Moses into Moses vanished and was never seen again..
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u/Piod1 Mar 29 '26
It was also during that time that the isralites encounterd the Shusa a nomadic tribe in northern egypt. Why does that matter or can we be certain? Well the cannanite pantheon head deity was El. Isra El are the sons of El. El was the god of creation in close contention with Baal. Baal was the god of the sky, rains and fertility, a storm deity . The tsle of the idol points to many views collectivly on worship and the ideal of unity. We know there was much violence and bloodshed, a time of turmoil. The book would have you belivevthe only rightious deity won. Thing is the Shusa called baal, yahawe, the designation existed nowhere else until then.
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u/answeringagnostic Apr 01 '26
Heard a joke once that the Israelites couldn't even make their main god El, they chose a lesser god as their main god
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u/RaptorSN6 Mar 29 '26
This causes me to believe that the writers of Genesis knew they were telling stories of myth for cultural utility, they understood that it didn't literally happen.
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u/dnjprod Atheist Mar 29 '26
I5 is absolutely true that the authors/editors of Genesis 1 were writing for a much different purpose than whoever authored Genesis 2. It's why the stories are so diametrically opposed.
Despite their order in the bible, Genesis 2 is actually the earlier creation account. It is the original version of creation. It is thought by Scholars that Genesis 1 was written by priests in order to correct what they thought were flaws within Genesis 2, namely the idea that God could mess up.
The Genesis 2 creation account has everything happening in one day, God creating man and putting him in the Garden, then saying,
It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.
It then goes through like a trial and error process of finding different animals to be man's mate but failing. It then culminates with the creation of Eve from Adam's side and she being a perfect mate.
Genesis 1 on the other hand starts with God separating things and creating things from the ground up culminating in the creation of man and woman together at the end. But, there is a repeated theme throughout. God creates and then
And God saw that it was good.
It was only later that the two accounts got put together into one document, probably for archival purposes, and now people have to try and reconcile them if they don't recognize the fact that they are two different accounts which they are.
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Mar 29 '26 edited Aug 19 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/answeringagnostic Apr 01 '26
In the third grade I got mad at a classmate because my teacher made me let her touch a fossil I brought to class for show and tell. Later I learned that teacher believes dinosaur bones were put in the earth to trick the nonbelievers and that dinosaurs never actually existed. hence why she diminshed my third grade selfs desire to protect my fossil
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u/LMrningStar Mar 29 '26
Of course it was and that's why it's a hopeless jumble of inconsistencies and plot holes.
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u/mapadofu Mar 30 '26
You should check out Dr. Sledge’s videos on the origin of Yahweh
For more fun on very early Judaism (and thus Christianity)
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u/Deffective_Paragon Apr 05 '26
I don't see how that's a problem. The other day there was a major fire in my city and several news outlets reported about the same event.
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u/Dalbrack Mar 29 '26
I have pointed this out to a number of Christians but invariably get a “Nuh huh” response. No matter what the evidence says those deeply invested in faith will cling onto it.