biffvernon wrote:UndercoverElephant wrote:
The entire myth is a lie.
Yep, that's kinda a feature of myths. Myths that are true are as rare as unicorns.
Yes, but the Old Testament, and the New Testament for that matter, are not entirely mythological. Herod, for example, really did exist, as did various Egyptians who appear in the OT. And so did a person who spoke many of the words attributed to Jesus, etc...
The Bible is a mixture of historical fact, and stories that were never supposed to be fact, all mixed up together.
Nowhere more than the supposed history of the Jewish People has fiction/mythology been confused with history. The true history of Judaism is even more removed from what people, including the Jews themselves, actually believe, than Christianity is from what Christians believe. And that is saying something. By comparison, the true history of Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and most other religions would be recognisable by most of the adherents of those religions. The reason for this difference is the particular tendency of Judaeo-Christian religion for using historical-sounding myths to convey philosophical-religious messages. This was widely understood before Christianity became the state religion of the Roman empire, and the all-powerful Roman church decided it wanted the literal reading of scripture to be the only acceptable one and started eliminating anybody who tried to claim it was a philosophical metaphor. They succeeded so well in this project, over a period of 1000 years of absolute power, that the truth remains largely un-understood even today, after a considerable effort to re-educate people about the real history and meaning.