Was the Bible forged?

Question

How can you say that the Bible is God's words when the story of Noah's ark was derived from the Epic of Gligamesh. For those who don't know what I'm talking about, the Epic of Gilgamesh tells of a story about a great king, and how the Earth came about. In it, tells the exact story of Noah's Ark, with a different name. (this includes the flood, the boat, the animals, e.t.c) The Epic of Gilgamesh was written/made during the pre-historic Mesopotamia era, when polytheism was still around. ...this was WAAAY before Christianity....or even Jeduaism..

So what gives?

Daniel >.>

SO NOT COOL...you can't answer my Tseng inspired questions!! grr..lol

haha, no I'm just playing with you [=
get on yahoo messengers NOW!! :P

Answer 1

Hehe... I guess Tseng's class payed off, eh?

AND OMG YOU"RE ABSOLUTELY CORRECT OH BRILLIANT ONE. The bible is just a collection of pre-written fables compiled into an old book.


Edit:

Hey Pal, "your" should be spelled "you're" dumbass. You are trying to say "you are" therefore you need to contract the are and add the apostrophe.


edit:

Hey, you should give the people your sources, no? And fine, any further Tseng inspired questions I will not answer... =)

Answer 2

Actually, if you closely compare the two, they're quite different:
1. The dimensions given for the ark in each story are completely different.
2. The SHAPE of each ark was completely different (the ark in the Epic of Gilgamesh was shaped like a cube).
3. Gilgamesh was supposed to be given immortality. Was Noah given immortality?

I could go on. It's obvious to me that the stories have the same root. But Judaism was a very sheltered religion. They didn't allow outside influences in.

Answer 3

No. The Epic of Gilgamesh was not "WAAAY" before Judiasm as you claim. Moses lived around 1400 BC, and the tablets of the Epic of Gilgamesh date to around 650 BC. The fact is that that text is based off of Atrahasis, whose original third tablet was written somewhere around 1600 BC., and that doesn't even contain many of the specifics of the Bible, such as the birds that Noah let fly out of the Ark. It is much more likely that the reason there are earlier Sumerian flood stories, is because there really was a global flood as described in the book of Genesis. Why choose the Genesis flood over the other flood stories as the truth? Because Jesus said if you do not believe Moses, how can you believe His words. And we know that Jesus is truth. The others are also much too unbelievable in their theology to be realistic(i.e. man's purpose being to relieve the gods of labour, gods destroy man because he is too loud, polytheism, etc..).

Answer 4

According to christianity there wasnt any prechristian time period on earth.
Christianity, according to the bible, stretches from the beginnings of time, so there is no such thing as prechristian time to a christian.

The best explanation by a christian would be that people broke away from the teachings of God as they spread across the earth and came up with their own versions of these stories.

You do realize that in the Bible not everyone was a christian. There were many other faiths and beliefs. Just look at the story of Joseph. The pharoah clearly wasnt a part of the "christian" (which was really the jewish) church. The story of Moses and even the story of the flood shows that most people had turned away from the truth and created their own false religions.

Christianity did not start at Christ or whenever the Bible was put together.
According to the Bible it started with the first humans. So your asking christians to explain if their story was forged because it was prechristian, but there really wasnt a time period of prechristianity according to christianity. There was just false teachings and people that fell away from the truth and created their own false religions and false Gods.

Answer 5

Given the nature as to why this question was asked, I'm damned if I will, and damned if I won't. So I won't

I doubt you really want an answer, what I believe you want is to try to tweak a few believers noses.

By the way, you mean was the Bible plagiarized, as in did the writer of the Bible steal someone else's story. The King of Gilgamesh will be suing Moses any day now.

Answer 6

I have your answer! Just think...if there were a world wide flood wouldnt there be some type of a record of it? I mean a huge natural disaster of that scale would surly have been documented after the suvivors of the flood got off the ark... The account of the flood would have been passed down the line through noah's three sons.... after a long period of time the accound would become foggy, and maybe even though of as just a legend... After the flood noah's decendents spread throughout the earth, each taking their own version of the account of noahs flood. Alot of a old cultures have an account of a world wide flood.... Its the same flood just a different version of the story. Multiple versions doesnt disprove noah's flood but rather strengthens and reinforces it!

Answer 7

When you realize that Abraham himself came from Ur of the Chaldea he carried that story with him and even met a son of Noah Shem. He according to the Jewish Tradition is Melchizedek and he is described as a man who had no beginning or end. Of course after the flood most of the people born afterward had shorter lifetimes. But those before the flood lived for many years. That is why Shem's life was so long.

But Abraham in time became the father to the Israelite people who were slaves in Egypt until the time of Moses.
But Moses was taught by his mother when he was in Egypt, as a little boy. And he learned alot of those stories before he wrote the first 5 books of the Bible.

You will find that Abraham was a well educated man and knew his history. He even knew about that Gilgamesh story. But he had the correct story because of his correspondence with Shem.

Answer 8

The bible is a compilation of many stories about different races and their development.

Unfortunately some of the authors gave personnal accounts of happenings which they themselves did not experience and this gave room to the misinterpretation of actual events that occurred during the time reported.

However, they are still useful writings in the bible.Moreso this should make you seek further in your quest for the Truth.

Answer 9

we do not know how long the story of noah was handed down as a spoken tradition before being written down. similarly we do not know how long the tale of utnapishtim was in babylon.

since we do not know how old either story was before it was first written down, we do not know which story came first.

christians can easily believe that their story is older, because it is in the bible.

christianity is much easier than you give it credit for: everything which is in the bible is true, everything not in the bible is false.

Answer 10

No, the bible was printed. Swords are forged.

The word you are thinking of is "plagarized," but the existence of the flood story in Gilgamesh doesn't discredit the story of the flood in Genesis - in fact, it reinforces the belief that a cataclysmic flood affected the region.

Answer 11

Are you asking if the authors copied another cultures stories to put in the bible. Yes, Yes they did. But are you surprised can we really expect people who believe in god and all his torture to be able to make up their own stories? No, no we can not.