When I researched the beginning and development of written language, I came to the story of Gilgamesh. It was written in cuneiform text about 2,400 B.C. In 1872 an Englishman, George Smith, had discovered a flood story written in cuneiform text on clay tablets which had unmistakable parallels to the Noahs Ark story in the Bible. What he had found was the original flood story. The tablets contained several Mesopotamian myths which also appear in the Bible. The names of the persons involved and measurements of the boat had been changed but in essence, the Bible stories are a copy of the more ancient Mesopotamian myths. The question is, did the Jews borrow the ancient myths and include them in their sacred texts?

Genesis starts with a creation story. I discovered that most nations had their own different creation myths. Genesis ch. 3 has the unreal story of a talking snake and the lives of Cain and Abel. Then we have Noah's Ark and the great flood which we will look at later. These myths have obviously been borrowed when the Jews were held captive by King Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon 586 to 538 B.C.

Because written language was not invented until 2,000 to 3,000 B.C. the stories in Genesis are either oral tradition or borrowed mythology. We move on to the second book of the Bible, Exodus, the legend of the children of Israel escaping from captivity and slavery in Egypt. This Bible account is dependent on at least twenty acts of magic. Scholars believe that this story is fiction, that it never happened. There is no archaeological evidence at all to confirm the narrative. These books, Genesis and Exodus, form the shaky basis of the Jewish faith.

We move to the Christian religion which started as an offshoot of the Jewish religion. All the originators of the Christian movement were devout Jews. Apart from Paul, they seem, to have disappeared about the time of the destruction of Jerusalem 70 A.D. Paul created Christianity. It is a mixture of Judaism and parts of the ancient Persian religion of Mithraism, loved by Roman solders. The Christian doctrine was not established until the Nicene Creed was introduced in 325 A.D. The faith quickly broke into many different kinds of religious groups as it remains today.

Bible quotations have been taken from The Revised Standard Version 1989.

I am indebted to Mrs. Beverley Butler for the loan of a genuine Cuneiform clay tablet from Mesopotamia which appears on the cover.

Steve Cooper, 2002