Three and two thousand years ago there was not one person in a million who was educated. Even those who were educated and intelligent at the time could only make assumptions of how the universe, our planet and the people on it began. Seeing that humankind is very imaginative and creative, it is understandable to me how in their minds they created the stories that were handed down by their forefathers. The Encyclopedia of Mythology gives us examples of thousands of gods and goddesses and their colorful mythical lives that all civilizations use to explain their genesis. The fanciful stories did not raise eyebrows at the time, except from a few rational thinkers. All the legends of their clans or tribes that finally became the Old and New Testaments were handed down orally from generation to generation, and along the way they were embellished by later generations living in the Middle East.
Most of the Old and New Testaments contain stories of older civilizations that are recognizable by scholars as well as lay people. The story of Gilgamesh, the hero of a Sumero-Babylonian epic recounting manÆs vain search for immorality guarded by jealous gods is well known to scholars and lay people alike who recognize the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden looking for eternal life.
There is not one religion in history that did not evolve from older religions. One can recognize that much of the Old Testament came from Babylon sources. The New Testament came into existence from the Old Testament. Then the Book of Mormon (and 500 other Christian sects with their own interpretations of the bible) grew out of the New Testament, and so it goes.
Most Christians begin with the false premise that the bible is not a book of myth, fable, and folklore, but of true history. This is why they spend so much time wondering how many angels can dance on the head of a pin or wondering who said what to whom. My question to Christians is, how did they get the electricity to run their typewriters to take down JesusÆ dictation.
