As you yourself said, the very earliest book of the Bible wasn't written until about 1500 BCE. But the 22,000 Cuneiform tablets in Ashurburnipal's library are each known to be several centuries older than that. And more importantly, they all were written by the same culture!
The Sumerian creation myth, Enuma Elish, says all life was borne in the belly of the sea, including each of the gods. The rest of the world on dry land was created by six generations of gods. The sixth divine generation created a man, Adamah, (the man of the red dirt). "Let us make man in our own image", they said. And it became man's job to complete creation so that the seventh generation of gods could rest. This same tale was also told in the Epic of Atrahasis. Except in that, they crafted 14 people, male and female, they created them by molding clay figurines out of the dust of the Earth. Then they killed one of their own as a sacrifice. One of the gods died for the good of mankind. After each of these figurines were soaked in his blood, the goddess, Mami breathed into them the breath of life.
Another passage in Enuma Elish concerned an immortal named Enki who trespassed on the sacred garden of Inanna, eating many of the fruits therein that were all forbidden to him. The goddess, Ninhursag witnessed his sin. She cursed him, and he fell. But Ninhursag freely forgave the fallen immortal and bore seven daughters to cure his wounds. One of them was called Ninti, the "daughter borne of the rib", for she was meant to close the wound to his side.
In the Epic of Gilgamesh, another work in Ashurburnipal's library, the goddess Inanna plants a special tree in her garden. Later, Gilgamesh while walking through the sacred grounds, discovered the dark maid, Lilith, whom Talmudic legend would one day call Adam's first wife. She had made her home in the forbidden tree, along with her companion, a serpent who could not be tamed. Gilgamesh, the god-king drew his blade, and drove Lilith and the serpent away from the forbidden tree, and out of the sacred garden forever.
Part of the epic of Atrahasis is repeated as part of the epic of Gilgamesh. But in that, Atrahasis' name is changed to Utnapishtim. This character was most commonly known as Ziusudra, but was also later called Xisuthros, and Sisuthros, and finally, Noah. Whatever his name really was, the ancient Sumerian Book of the Kings describes him as the son of Ubar-Tutu, king of Shuruppak, which dates the epic flood at sometime in the 29th Century BCE. In every account, mankind disturbed the gods in their rest, so the gods wrought a great flood to kill them all. But Ziusudra and his family were saved when he received a divine warning to tear down his house and build a great barge, one big enough for his entire menagerie and the best of all his livestock. The Bible departs from the original in that Ziusudra's flood came in as a rush of water with a dark cloud in the background. Be it a storm surge or volcanic tsunami, it broke the dykes and moved in over the land in a rage, destroying everything in the entire Tigris-Euphrates flood plain. In every version of this story, including the one eventually included in Genesis, most of the details were similar or identical, including the depth of the flood; 15 cubits, or 22 feet. This wasn't enough even to muddy the foothills of Ararat many hundreds of miles away. But it was enough to obscure every hilltop visible from Shuruppak. In the Gilgamesh version, only the treetops can be seen rising above the waves. So he releases a bird to find the land. As the waters recede the waterways are damned by hundreds of human bodies. On the seventh day, the barge comes to rest on an estuary at the mouth of the river, and a thankful Noah offers a sacrifice to the gods on a hill near its banks.
These ancient tablets was estimated to have been written at different times running from 1700 BCE to 2200 BCE, and were composed by Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians, and Chaldeans, the latter being a Semitic people ancestral to the Jews. So it ascends beyond the realm of mere myth in that at least a few of these characters may have really existed. If so, then Gilgamesh king of Urok, was literally the first man described by name and deed in all of recorded history. And what is believed to be his tomb was recently discovered by archaeologists in Iraq. The Sumerian King List is the oldest historic document known to man. And it indicates that the story of Noah is loosely based on someone who actually lived as well. There is now some scientific support of this position too as archaeological surveys at the site of Shuruppak also confirm that the whole place was once deluged under approximately two dozen feet of water, roughly 5,000 years ago.
The dates are difficult to determine because all these legends were written before the invention of the number zero. The numeric system of Shuruppak wasn't based on ten but sixty. Consequently, the formula for calculating the exact figures is very difficult to work out. If read as written, the monarchy descended directly from heaven, and each of the earliest kings ruled for tens of thousands of years, a heck of a long lifetime by anyone's standards. However comparisons of mundane documents like the sales receipts of cattle indicate that in some cases, simply dividing by either ten or twelve will often provide a more accurate number. This is how someone in their early eighties could be said to be 969 years old. Still, an eighty year-old man living back then would be impressive, since people in most primitive societies seldom live to see their 50th or even 40th birthday.
So there are several significant parallels between many of the stories in the Bible and the work of the Mesopotamians from at least 1,000 years earlier. But the similarities don't stop there. One of the legends of the Pharaoh, Seneferu is that he had one of his mages part the red sea just to retrieve a bauble accidentally dropped by one of his lovely maidens. And the Chaldean hero, Hammurabi supposedly went up a mountain to receive the famous Law Code from the sun-god, Shamash. Both of these events were to have taken place at least 300 years before the time of Moses. So Moses' version can't possibly be the original, now can it? Hammurabi's is, and his original Law Code is now on display (in real life) at the London museum. But the lost ark of the covenant apparently exists only in movies.
Beelzebub, the "Lord of the Flies" and the "prince of devils" in the New Testament, was really Ba'al Zebul, "the high prince", and "lord of the home", and an apparently real king of the city of Ugarit around the time of Job, and just a couple centuries before Moses. Lucifer, son of the Dawn, in Isaiah 14:12 was really a Babylonian prince named Helel ben Shahar. He tried to overthrow his father, king Shahar, (the dawn) brother of Shalim, (the dusk) but his koo was defeated, and he was cast down. The story was transferred to astrology where Helel is played by the planet Venus, (the morning star, or "Day star") and his father is the moon. Shahar and Shalim both claimed to be the sons of El, as did Jesus eventually. And El (Elyon) is played by the rising sun, diminishing Venus and accepting only the moon by his side or in his absence. The serpent, as you know, was literally that, a snake, keeping company with the wrong woman in the wrong place.
Somehow, Lilith and the serpent traded identities for about 1,000 years, as all of the early Renaissance renderings of the Temptation of Eve depict the serpent of the garden as a woman, allegedly, Lilith, (Lilitu) according to rabbinical scholars. This tradition endured through many famous artists, and many great works including the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and the stone walls of the cathedral at Notre Dame. In King James' time, the people adopted a new serpent, and cast "the devil" in that role instead. But even Satan himself isn't who most people think it is. The Hebrew word is Shai'tan, which means "the opposer", specifically, one who opposes faith. The current Semitic concept of this character seems to be based on a Persian deity from 600 BCE. According to the Zend Avesta, rightous men, upon their deaths may be taken to the Kingdom of Justice and Truth under Ahura-Mazda, the principle god of Zoroastrianism. The alternative is to doom evil men to the Kingdom of the Lie, ruled by Ahriman, the lord of lies, also known as "the Opposer". And the list goes on and on with many more even more profound parallels between the character of Jesus and that of Prometheus, Dionysus, Alcestis, Mithras, Apollo, Hercules, Krsna, Osiris, Buddha, and Zarathustra, all of whom were worshiped centuries earlier.
So, Stilldeceived, how do you think all these parallels come to be? Your explanation seems to be that each of the pagan legends is somehow loosely based on the Bible, which is still somehow the original revealed truth, and that all the pagan stories are merely fables distorted (perhaps by demonic intent) to confuse the faith of those who still hold the Bible to be the only truly accurate document men have ever managed to write in the entire history of journalism. In this perspective, Noah's version of the flood stayed uncorrupted over thousands of years while each of the Mesopotamian variants were all confused almost immediately, even though they each match each other more than any of them do the account in Genesis.
But I have another explanation, and it concerns another story in the Bible that may have a element of truth to it. The Mesopotamian empires were the most advanced culture of their age. But as with all empires, there came an unfortunate end. Hamurabi and Nebuchadnezzar both worked to erect the Marduk Ziggurat, a mammoth tower who's ruins can still be seen from the site of the old hanging gardens of Babylon. But the tower of Babel(on) took generations to build, and the empires that financed it collapsed before it could be completed. Very quickly, the world's most advanced society were in many cases reduced to living as nomadic and unlearned cattle herders. The very people who had invented syllabic text were illiterate in just a few decadese, and kept their ancestral traditions alive orally for at least 50 generations until the old stories could be written down again by the Phoenicians and the Greeks. By that time, it became evident that the religions of all the neighboring cultures whom they encountered had some influence over the content of their tales. Only Ashurburnipal's library remained intact, locked away in a vault and buried for thousands of years. Then as we peer into the original works, we can see how much western theism has evolved from its polytheist roots. There is no way the Bible could be the original version. Because the details of all these others don't match up the way they should if that were true. And all of them were written by the very grandfathers of those who would eventually compose or compile the Biblical version.
The Dead Sea Scrolls are the absolute oldest of any of the Biblical records, I'll grant you that. But they contain little more than just the Book of Isaiah, and even that is only about 250 years older than Jesus himself. About half of the Bible is completely unknown as it has been lost forever ages ago. If you think its still intact, then c[/size][/font]rack open yours and look for the lost prophesy that Christ should be a Nazarene, or the prediction of Elias' restoration. What about the books of the Covenant and of the Wars of the Lord, the books of Jasher, Shemaiah or Jehu? Of Statutes, the Prophesy of Ahijah and Visions of Iddo, or the acts of Solomon, Nathan and Gad, or of Uzziah by Isaiah? Where are the sayings of the seers, the epistle of Jude or Paul's epistles to the Corinthians, Ephesians and Liodiceans? All these books are referenced elsewhere as being part of the whole, yet they're all missing now, omitted by men altering the supposedly infallible and inalterable word of God at their mere mortal whim.
Now when you arbitrarily remove a significant number of the original books, and add a few gospels and revelations, then you have definitely changed that compilation, and it cannot be called "intact" anymore.
It is hailed as the "word of God", and believers must uphold it as infallible, and absolutely literally true, and "God breathed". To find a flaw in that is not to merely recognize the errors of the men who wrote it. Instead Bibliolaters believe that a flaw in the Bible means that God lied. Didja get that? Many fundamentalist Biblical literalists actually state that a flaw in the Bible would disprove God. If that ain't worshipping the Bible, what is? [/size][/font]
While it is probably true that I've had no experience with God, (because no one really has) I have had plenty of experience with the BIble. In fact, if I had never read that, I would probably still be a Christian today. [/size][/font]
And don't assume that just because I don't agree with you, that I have "absolutely no experience" in this area. Its rude little comments like that what make me write these long refutations instead of just letting it go. Besides, I would bet that I've probably had more of that sort of experience than you have.
I did just propose an hypothesis, one that is supported by an awful lot of concrete, verifiable evidence. But I don't believe I've stated any opinions in this entire post. The Bible has already been disproved, not only by science, but by Christians. It is not a literal history, and the majority of the Christian world knows and accepts that, and has no problem with it. And that ain't just an opinion either!
