Quick reply as I’m dead tired.
I am familiar with some creation stories, and looked at Wikipedia to see more. While creation from chaos is a major category of creation stories, they are many and varied. E.g.
Creation ex Nihilo
Earth Diver
Creation from Chaos
Earth Parents
Emergence Myths
Creation by Dismembering a Primordial Being
Yes, I should have been clearer my point was in relation to creation stories of the Ancient Near East, as these are part of the relevant context (when discussing Genesis) that provides clues to what creation meant to people at that time, along with contemporaneous literature etc. That said, many (not all - as far as I know) of the other types of myth contain motifs, e.g. deep water or an abyss, that are commonly used to denote some state of ‘unbeing’ in the sense of not having been brought into order, not purposeful or civilised. Deep places and deep water often signify in ancient literature things that contrast with the order and purpose of community life etc. Nb I’m not just plucking that out of the air but there’s just to much info on this to try and support it with quotes.
This description, to me, seems closer to an atheistic explanation of religion and creation stories. From an atheist perspective, we'd expect creation stories (and religions) to reflect the societies that they came from, rather than a universal truth.
It’s just an explanation. I’m not sure how much to write about this as it’s all just summaries of much wider issues.
I'll mention that from an atheistic perspective we can compare historically recent religions for which we know the origin (Scientology, Tenrikyo) to older religions when theorising (or wildly conjecturing) how the older religions came about.
That’s an approach that assumes similarity in thought between different eras. A copy of a belief system or something that imitates or co-opts some features of such a system is more likely to be based in later perception of the original and its affects than on a proper understanding of it’s origins. All belief systems reflect different aspects of basic human functioning and needs but what priorities and overall mindsets give birth to what expression of those things at what point in history is much more complicated. But that’s a very layered argument. The best I can offer you in a few words as a starting point is to suggest reading Auerbach’s Mimesis (if you haven’t already). It’s a complex book but basically outlines how the literature and sacred writings of different eras both reflects and helped to define those cultures in ways that are pretty comprehensive. This is a good book to provide an initial layer from which the writings of e.g. David Rosenberg on Abraham can be appreciated and understood.
That’s without getting into what makes Judaism, Christianity stand out.
I've looked at a review of 'The Lost World of
Genesis 1', and I'm not sure it's the right thing to read for me to understand the origin of Christianity, as it appears to presuppose the truth of The Bible and is therefore not objective to my eyes.
That seems a bit blinkered - ? It’s not a ‘this will lead you to believe in God book’, it’s an interpretation of the genesis creation narrative based in a technical examination of the Hebrew, other relevant parts of the bible and analysis of the religious and literary writings of contemporary cultures regarding their overall thinking about ‘creation’ and what that means.
My understanding of The Bible says that it is more than that. It includes morality, and an explanation of the natural (e.g. creation, diversity of life) and the supernatural (e.g. God, Jesus, The Holy Spirit.)
Yes - insofar as those things have a bearing on God’s relationship to man, man’s relationship to God and people to each other etc etc. I’m not suggesting it’s 100% relationships, but that’s what most of it is given significance by. Given that we’re off topic and all the points raised here could fill a book, it might be worth narrowing it down to that, as it’s maybe the easiest one to address just using the bible.
I can see that this is your personal interpretation of The Bible and the intentions of its authors. However, while I have understood more about what you believe, I don't see an argument that should convince me to accept your interpretation as better than mine.
There wasn’t an argument, it’s just a very brief partial summary. I didn’t have any expectation that you would accept that as something to believe, I was just summarising a wider issue. I would say it’s a question that needs to be considered from the perspective of what makes up a culture, what are the different areas of study that inform that, what are the driving forces of a given culture and how is that expressed and so on, what is it that made Israel potentially distinct. For starters anyway.