Most people were taught that the Bible dropped out of heaven completely unique and untouched by

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]Did you know that the Bible borrows a lot of stories from older ancient writings? Let's start with the story of Noah and the flood. There are older versions of this story like the Epic of Gilgamesh and Atrahasis. Same plot. Just written down centuries before Genesis was. Basically, God floods the earth, a man builds a boat, he saves the animals, he sends out the birds. Again, that story existed hundreds of years before Genesis. And then the laws in the book of Exodus look very similar to the Code of Hammurabi. Same structure, same type of rules, just written centuries before the Book of Exodus was. And then the Book of Proverbs, parts of it closely mirrors an ancient Egyptian document called Amen-em-opet. And then when we look at Moses as a baby put into a basket, that same story shows up earlier in another ancient writing called Sargon of Akkad. I hope I'm pronouncing this right. I only ever read about it. I don't ever hear about it. Then the creation story also sounds a lot like the story from Babylon called Enuma Elish. Same idea, chaos then order then humans. Then the Book of Job, it's very similar to the writings in Mesopotamia that people sometimes call the Babylonian Job. I'm not going to try to pronounce this. Both wrestle with the suffering of a person who appears righteous. Even the Garden of Eden is very similar to Mesopotamia traditions, especially Adapa and the paradise-like land of Dilmun. There was paradise, lost immorality, and forbidden knowledge. All of these other ancient stories were written long before the Bible was written. Even the virgin birth was not new. Ancient cultures already had stories of gods or heroes born through divine intervention. So the honest takeaway is that the Bible did not drop out of the sky. It was written by people living in a world full of shared stories, shared ideas, and shared myths.

[00:01:56]And what the Israelites did was take those stories and say, "No, that wasn't their god. That was our god." So, the Bible is not unique or divinely isolated as many people were taught. So, if you are going to take it seriously, you need to at least be honest about where these stories came from. Lots of men writing these stories, compiling these stories, and teaching these stories to benefit their power and control over others.