101 Myths of the Bible: how ancient scribes - Conscious Evolution TV

Preface
n 101 Myths of the Bible, I examine many stories in the Old Testament and show their
mythological nature. In choosing the stories, I selected material from three broad
categories.
First, I collected stories with at least two contradictory accounts in the Bible. I
wanted to show not only the existence of contradictions, which meant that at least one
version of the story was untrue, I also wanted to explain how the contradictions came
about, which to me was far more interesting. What was the story behind the story?
In many instances, the inconsistencies reflect the ongoing propaganda wars
between the kingdoms of Judah and Israel. On other occasions, an early version of a
story was replaced by a later version. This was particularly true in the Creation and
flood accounts, where early Egyptian influences on Israel came into conflict with later
Babylonian sources.
Second, I looked for biblical stories that closely paralleled earlier myths and legends
from neighboring cultures. While in some cases the influences were obvious, as
with the Babylonian flood myth, in many cases the task was quite difficult. Because of
the biblical emphasis on monotheism, the authors had to eliminate references to or
symbols of deities other than the Hebrew god. These changes were made by transforming
foreign deities into human characters and sometimes changing the locale of the story.
As intended, this version usually disguised the true nature of the biblical story,
making it difficult to identify the earlier mythological source. Nevertheless, in many
instances the editors overlooked some of the telltale signs of these earlier sources and,
even in disguised form, it is often possible to strip off the costumes and see what
mythological elements the biblical authors masked.
The third category involved stories that simply couldn’t be true. I was concerned
primarily with archaeological data that indicated that events described in the Bible as
happening within a particular time frame couldn’t have occurred at the time indicated.