I am interested to know what bible stories came from other or previous sources. Thanks.

Probably the most well known is the Genesis ghawd gets pissed off and destroys mankind with a worldwide flood. Similar myths preexisted bible times by a goodly number of years.

"The flood myth motif is found among many cultures as seen in the Mesopotamian flood stories, Deucalion and Pyrrha in Greek mythology, the Genesis flood narrative, Manu in Hinduism, the Gun-Yu in Chinese mythology, Bergelmir in Norse mythology, in the lore of the K'iche' and Maya peoples in Mesoamerica, the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwa tribe of Native Americans in North America, the Muisca, and Cañari Confederation, in South America, and the Aboriginal tribes in southern Australia."


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_myth

The virgin birth of a god-king that sacrifices himself for the good of the people and was then reborn or ressurected.

Yeah. This one is as common as pig's tracks.

It's about time for somebody to make it their own all over again.

Much if not most of the first five bible books draw from Babylonian, Sumerian, and Egyptian stories and mythology, which pre-date the bible myths by at least hundreds of years. Drawing from the myths of other cultures diminishes in the later books of the OT, but doesn't stop entirely. And the NT Jesus stories draw from different sets of previous myths, largely Greek and Egyptian.

Here are a couple of resources to read to get you started:

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2030/2030-h/2030-h.htm

http://religion.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.001.0001/acrefore-9780199340378-e-247

The creation. Genesis 1 is Babylonian, as is the story of Esther. There it's ishtar dragon references are also babylonian.
Moses has numerous egyptyan lifts as well



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/24/2018 01:05PM by dogblogger.

Judaism adopted (and passed on to Christianity) many basic beliefs from Zoroastrianism, which was a principal religion of the Babylonians. The Jews picked up the ideas when they were captive and lived among the Babylonians. These are ideas that do not appear in the pre-Captivity religion of the Hebrews:

- a final judgement based on one's righteousness
- an eternal life after death, either of joy or misery
- an "anti-god" deity, an evil deity fighting god
- angels who appear to humans

For a good introduction, see the Wikipedia article.

An offshoot of Zoroastrianism was Mithraism, which had great influence on Christianity, giving it the following myths:
- salvation by baptism in blood
- Sunday as a holy day
- birth of the savior on December 25
- witnessed by shepherds

There are probably more - this is just off the top of my head..

Zoroastrianism was not--and is not--a Babylonian religion. It is Persian and still exists in Iran and in a community in Bombay (not sure why the modern name for that city is banned).

The Persians were conquered by the Babylonians, and their leaders were relocated to Babylon just as the ruling class in Judea was removed to that location. The two exilic groups came into contact there, and the Judeans (Judaism did not exist before this time) adopted a lot of Zoroastrian myths and doctrines.

Here is a good BBC introduction to the religion and its influence on the Abrahamic faiths, including monotheism.

http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20170406-this-obscure-religion-shaped-the-west



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 09/24/2018 03:09PM by Lot's Wife.

To add just a small bit to this conversation. It is sometimes suggested that Akhenaten was either Moses or his mentor. Akhenaten unsuccessfully tried to convert Egypt to monotheism 500 years before Judaism started to arise.

Obviously Moses is an invention just as the entire Exodus saga is either invention or exaggeration.

My little addition to this discussion is that there are three principal philosophies that I see, Egyptian, Persian, and Greek. And for my money the most influential religious development in history is Ethical Monotheism which is a Zoroastrian concept.

Yes. The central tenet of the Abrahamic religions is monotheism, and that entered Judaism as a result of contact with Persians in Babylon.

The one thing I would add to your religious scheme is Canaanite influence. The Hebrews were Canaanites; Judaism was a reformed version of Canaanite worship. The entire imagery of the Garden of Eden existed in earlier religions but was radically reinterpreted after the priestly class returned to Judea after the exile.

So I'd tentatively say that the most pervasive elements of Judaism were Canaanite, the most distinctive characteristic (monotheism) was Persian, and a number of myths were absorbed from distant Egypt and the Greek-ish inhabitants of Palestine.

Right but I didn't add that because that influence wasn't external. It was literally their heritage.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Yes. The central tenet of the Abrahamic religions
> is monotheism, and that entered Judaism as a
> result of contact with Persians in Babylon.
>
> The one thing I would add to your religious scheme
> is Canaanite influence. The Hebrews were
> Canaanites; Judaism was a reformed version of
> Canaanite worship. The entire imagery of the
> Garden of Eden existed in earlier religions but
> was radically reinterpreted after the priestly
> class returned to Judea after the exile.
>
> So I'd tentatively say that the most pervasive
> elements of Judaism were Canaanite, the most
> distinctive characteristic (monotheism) was
> Persian, and a number of myths were absorbed from
> distant Egypt and the Greek-ish inhabitants of
> Palestine.

This is very close to my sense as well.

In addition (taking into consideration that there is a time shift here of many centuries of further intellectual thinking) I, personally, am tremendously impressed that the Jewish concept of "Ein Sof" (think: the true, inclusive, concept of "God" as God exists, or MIGHT exist, in factual reality), and the Hindu concept of Brahman are, for all intents and purposes, identical.

I was raised Hindu/Vedanta, and I became a Jew as an adult, and I am still amazed that the conceptual understanding here between these apparently disparate peoples is virtually identical, since I am not aware of any historical incidences which detail ANY interactions between Canaanites/Hebrews/Israelites/Jews, on the one hand, and Hindus (or others from that general subcontinent area) on the other hand. From all appearances, these two, extremely different, cultures independently developed virtually identical understandings of the nature of not only deity, but also physical reality as it is now, contemporaneously, being increasingly revealed by physicists.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/24/2018 04:02PM by Tevai.

...oh, OK. Now I am really confused. So who gets my tithing money now? Where do I go for tithing settlement NOW???!!!

...I'm calling the Branch President NOW!! He'll straighten this crap out...he went to SEMINARY for God's sake!!!

A god screwing a mortal woman and then leaving behind a demi-god offspring.

I’d like to hear Honest TBM’s take on this one, but IIRC, the church taught that the OP has it backwards. These stories didn’t come FROM the earlier sources; they were fallen versions of the truth that spread around the world at the time of the Tower of Babel. Honest TBM? Please enlighten the mood.

Its not TB "M" thou wicked people as the super holy prophet Nelson hath gotten a super important revelation on the most important issue facing mankind in 2018 regarding the name of the people who belong to the most honest/transparent Church, even a true Church, upon the earth. Thus I'm now "Honest TB[long]". Only an anti-[long] could think there is any more important issue facing mankind in 2018.

Well we believe in the Bible, and of course we add on the caveat of "as far as its translated correctly". That way if someone shares some embarrassing story from the Bible we could quickly give the "as far as its translated correctly" excuse to suggest that maybe that particular story wasn't accurate in the Bible. However that's not completely accurate because the "as far as its translated correctly" statement by Joseph Smith was made solely because we have the doctrinally accepted perfect translation called the "Joseph Smith Translation" (JST) of the Bible. Well there are some people who don't think that the JST is perfect and they are the anti-[long]s and you can tell that anyone claiming to be an apologist that rejects any JST Bible verses/stories is a very dishonest person. And thanks to the miracle of the Internet in the 21st century we can now quickly look up the JST and thus not have to worry about excuses anymore but just focus on the holy writ which we need to consider as the eternally unchangeable and full of non-embarrassing truths.

Some of the golden gems there.


1. Jonah 2:5 The waters compassed me about, even to the soul; the depth closed me round about; the weeds were wrapped about my head.
http://centerplace.org/hs/iv/iv-jon.htm

2. Gen 8:37-38 ... every beast after his kind, and all the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing that creepeth on the earth after his kind, and every fowl after his kind, and every bird of every sort; And they went unto Noah into the ark, two and two of all flesh wherein is the breath of life; and they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God had commanded him ...
http://centerplace.org/hs/iv/iv-gen.htm

3. 2Kin 2:23-24 And he went up from thence unto Bethel; and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head. And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood and tore forty and two children of them.
http://centerplace.org/hs/iv/iv-2ki.htm


This last story about the bald prophet Elisha reminds me of the super holy Crown Prince in the Church right now who is patiently waiting for the holy prophet Nelson to pass on so he can be the holy prophet himself. In this scripture we learn about how the "Protect Children" program is really envisioned to work by Church leaders. If sincere investigators with small children ever start visiting the Wards in my Stake, but they don't because the anti-Church literatures scares all sincere investigators away, then we'll share with them the story about these two she bears and the 42 children so they can know what to expect for their children in the Church and in the course of their interviews. I was starting to wonder if the Church might abandon our beloved doctrines and take a path of actually caring for the safety of the children like that anti-Elisha guy named Sam Young was pushing. However that excommunication sure shows the world that we're fully behind the Bible way of handling things and that we applaud the story of Elisha, she bears, and the 42 kids.

There are other stories I could share. But I don't have all day to post on this board. Being busy bees in this [Long]ism is very busy with no real time to think. We got to clean chapel toilets so poor Heavenly Father can save money on janitorial expenses. We got plenty of other things to do too.

One word - Babel. Something that big would leave a mark.

Sure.

Moses was leading the children of Israel over the bridge crossing the Red Sea. The Egyptian army was gaining on them. Moses hurried everyone up to double time and they got off the bridge with time to spare. Moses strategically waited until the entire army was on the bridge, then radioed the B-52s to drop their smart bombs, completely destroying the bridge and annihilating the entire army.

If I told you the myth you would never believe it.

On a more serious note, in the New Testament there are two references to practices of contemporary religious groups. Once Jesus made reference to people who are are made eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom or something. This is a reference to the Mysteries of Attis, whose rites culminated in men actually castrating themselves to help achieve a higher state of spirituality. And the thing about being washed in the blood of the Lamb (i.e., Jesus) was a tie-in to the rites of Dionysus, part of which included standing underneath a large platform on which a bull was immobilized, and then cut/torn open so its blood would drain down over the participants, thereby "purifying" them.

I don't think that Ragnarok is similar enough to The Book of Revelation (<--singular, Y'all - a pet peeve), but Odin stabbed himself with a spear and hung himself from a tree in an attempt to see/learn the runes. He died and was resurrected, maybe. Some versions of the myth say he didn't die. He can be seen as sacrificing himself for knowledge like when he stabbed himself in the eye (*not* Jesus style).

Cross-contamination of ideas, many many ideas? Who knows? Norwegians got around. Romans got around. Greeks got around. Asians, including those in the subcontinent, got around. Hell, errrrrebody got around, got busy, and told stories. And sometimes killed people who wouldn't convert.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/25/2018 01:17AM by Beth.

Parsing out the real Norse and Celtic stories is difficult due to the fact that the only versions we have were written by Christian monks around the 10th century, IIRC. So yes, there is a great deal of cross-cultural influence.

Thank you for expressing it better than I did.

Freudian slip? SMH

That's where Misteltoe comes from. The red is the blood of the god dying at the winter solstice.

It's important to remember that the Scandinavians, Celts, Germans, Celts, and most of the Southeast Europeans were all Indo-Europeans with languages and religions stemming from a single source. That's incidentally why the Greek and Roman gods are so similar: they were originally the same.

Europe was full of gods who died at the end of the year. Their demise was part of the annual cycle of death and rebirth, which is from where everything from Maypoles to Easter arose.

So if I am reading all of these "myths" correctly, you are atheists because...?

anonthegreat Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> So if I am reading all of these "myths" correctly,
> you are atheists because...?

Because there isn't a shred of evidence to show any "god" exists. Nor any need for one to explain anything.

The variety and sharing of god-myths shows that humans, ignorant of how things work, imagine being like themselves but more powerful are behind the stuff they don't understand. And they make up stories about what they imagine.

That's why.

In two or three thousand years (assuming humans are still around), I expect today's beliefs will be considered myth.

/no, or very little, text/

Thank you for your honest answer.

Joseph's Myth