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

Conclusion
he preceding look at 101 myths of the Bible showed us the many ways in which
biblical history evolved and how it was transformed by later experiences.
We began with an examination of the biblical Creation myths and saw that the J
and P Creation stories both originated with variations of the Theban Creation myths
of Egypt, but each presented the story in a different manner, revealing different images
of deity. The P deity was aloof and had no personal interaction with humanity. The P
Creation was austere, a mechanical recital of events unfolding day by day. The J deity
was personable, anthropomorphic, and continuously engaged in human interaction.
The J story proceeded with great literary style, plot detail, and character development,
and it was deeply concerned with moral issues.
In both versions, we saw the underlying Egyptian polytheism in disguised form. P
stripped the deities of persona and reduced them to the raw natural phenomena that
they represented. J left the persona but eliminated the connection to the natural phenomena,
transformed the deities into human beings where P only discussed process. J’s
account included the stories of Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden, and Cain and
Abel—stories that have touched humanity for close to three thousand years.
P’s minimalism, however, made it difficult to change the storyline. Nevertheless,
editing errors distorted the original text, giving us seven days of Creation instead of
eight and erroneously placing part of the second day at the beginning of the third. J, on
the other hand, originated with a substantial Egyptian strata about the children of the
heavens and the earth but, much later, the simple stories from Egypt became confused
and infused with elements of similar sounding tales from Mesopotamia. Fortunately,
the biblical redactors kept both accounts separate so that each could be easily examined
on its own merits.
Such was not the case with the flood myth. Here, J and P were intimately intertwined,
attempting to weave a single tapestry out of multiple incompatible threads.