Are the stories in Scripture just recycled myths from ancient religions—or is there a deeper reason those themes appear across history? Join the conversation and explore how Christians can respond when the Bible’s originality is questioned. #BibleOrigins#TruthInScripture#ChristianApologetics#christianforums#crosswalkforums#forums#crosswalk#faithcommunity#faithforums
Some skeptics claim that the Bible isn’t original—that it borrowed from older religious myths like those found in Mesopotamian or Egyptian cultures. Stories like a global flood, a virgin birth, or a dying and rising god appear in other ancient traditions, and that leads many to question whether Scripture is truly divinely inspired or just another retelling.
Lets look at one such claim, the flood.
Bible talkes of a holy God infuriated by a rebellious and sinful world.
A warning is given and Noah builds a gigantic vessel, he gathers food stuff and ani als come to him and are stowed on the ark.
Aftef boarding the door shuts by its self and a week later the flood happen.
To test if the waters are going down a raven then a dove.
There is a certain amount of supernatural happenings but most of the account is readonable and rational.
The gilmadesh story is of a giant reed Coracle, which when a modern version was made leaked, interesting with everybody dead the gods weren’t being fed and they crowded round the offering being made.
Of the two accounts the gilmadesh story is clearly a copy of the original bible account.
Again, people putting and sowing doubts about scripture and not doing the extra needed to see the truth. You might want to look at the history of the Roman Empire, the popes, the Jesuits, the healing of the deadly wound (1798), and this may help some unless their entangled in enough lies that people count truth.
I want to see if we can spark a meaningful conversation about what is considered ‘readable’ and ‘rational’. Obviously those are things that can, and quite often do, vary from perspective to perspective. But I for one have a difficult time comprehending the concept that a senior citizen built a vessel of such magnitude and then ran around a ship deck with his bizarre crew of the furry, the feathered and the scaly for over a year?
Let’s explore the simple logistics:
Captive tiger eats ~15# ungulate meat/day
– So a pair would eat 30#, assuming the female didn’t get pregnant
— To meet that need, you’d have to bring on board an additional… 175-200 deer.
A pair of polar bears would necessitate an additional 50 seals to sustain their diet.
And lastly, where and how do you suppose they stored the conservative 225,000 pounds of rations for the elephants? And who supplied that? And their water consumption can hit fifty gallons a piece per day. Where on Sam Elliot’s slippery ski slopes did they store 37,500 gallons just for the elephants?!
So I’m going to say that myth is absolutely relied on…
They have carefully looked at these issues and have reasonable answers about how the animals fitted into yhe ark, how they were cared for, food, water and mucking out.
The Ark was substantially bigger than needed for the quanity of creatures so there would have been amply space for food to be stored. Water too could be stored, collected from rainfall and even from the flood when passing through fresh water.
There is also the possibility that the creatures could have fallen into a state of torpor and required less food and water.
@Fritzpw_Admin, of course, there were other stories about the Great Flood, for example, because those stories in the forms of the countries’ religions were carried down from generation to generation, thus demonstrating that the flood actually happened.
However, God inspired the story in the Bible to honor his justice in punishing pervasive sin in his creation. The difference is in the details, which follow God’s inspiration.
The claim that the Bible plagiarizes older myths because of surface-level similarities is a tired skeptic’s bluff. It’s rhetorical smoke, not exegetical fire. The truth is: the Bible doesn’t borrow from pagan myths, it subverts them, crushes them, and declares the one true God in a world of counterfeits (Isaiah 45:5).
Yes, ancient cultures had flood stories. But that doesn’t discredit Genesis, it confirms it. A global deluge would naturally echo in every civilization. But Genesis 6–9 is not myth, it gives historical detail, moral causality, covenantal meaning, and divine judgment. The gods of Babylon sent a flood because humans were noisy (see Atrahasis); the God of Scripture sent it because “the earth was filled with violence” (Genesis 6:11). That’s not recycled myth, that’s moral revelation.
You’ll hear about virgin births in myths, but those are sexual, pagan, and often grotesque. The Bible’s virgin birth is not mythic, it’s miraculous, fulfilling Isaiah 7:14, where a virgin (Heb. almah) shall conceive, and the child’s name is Immanuel—“God with us.” No seduction, no cosmic mating ritual, just the Holy Spirit overshadowing Mary (Luke 1:35), so that the Holy One born is called the Son of God. Pagan legends sexualize; Scripture sanctifies.
And yes, dying and rising gods appear in myth, Osiris, Tammuz, Adonis. But look closer: they die by fate, they return to the same world, they bring seasonal fertility. Christ’s resurrection is in history, bodily, and once for all (Hebrews 9:26). He didn’t “revive”-He rose in power (Romans 1:4), defeated death (1 Corinthians 15:55), and now reigns eternally (Revelation 1:18). That’s not a mythic cycle, it’s redemptive conquest.
God anticipated the counterfeits and mocked them outright: “To whom then will you liken God, or what likeness compare with Him?” (Isaiah 40:18). He didn’t borrow, He thundered: “I am the LORD, and there is no other. I form light and create darkness…” (Isaiah 45:6–7). He’s not like Baal or Ra, He speaks, acts, and fulfills prophecy (Isaiah 41:21–23; John 13:19).
Similarity doesn’t mean plagiarism. Satan is a counterfeiter. Lies dress like truth. But the Gospel doesn’t echo myths, it breaks them open. In a world of dying and rising gods, only Jesus rose to never die again (Romans 6:9). In a world of man-made tales, only the Bible says: “We did not follow cleverly devised myths… but were eyewitnesses of His majesty” (2 Peter 1:16).
So the next time someone says the Bible copied myths, remind them, no myth ever changed the world. But the Word of God “is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword” (Hebrews 4:12), and the crucified Christ “disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them” (Colossians 2:15). That’s not mythology. That’s eternal, blood-soaked, soul-saving truth.
God’s revelation of Himself in Scripture to the people to whom He gave His revelation did not happen in a vacuum. God operated within the culture, time, place, and language. The Old Testament, then, presents us with ancient near eastern people living in an ancient near eastern context. In the same way that the New Testament was written in the context of first century Greco-Roman society and the diverse Jewish experience of the Second Temple period.
We cannot divorce Scripture from context, otherwise we will fail to read Scripture rightly. The Bible did not float down from heaven, but was God-breathed through ordinary human people who had their own cultural and linguistic contexts. So we should not be surprised that biblical writers borrowed motifs and ideas common to their context. That the Bible “borrows” from the common fabric of ancient culture is neither scandalous nor surprising–however what I think is most profound is how and where the Bible subverts the ideas and motifs of the ancient world. At times it seems as though the biblical writers are knowingly borrowing ideas, but intentionally subverting them.
We can see this as far back as the opening chapter of Genesis, where we still see the ancient idea of a primordial sea that represents disordered chaos; but where in other ancient near eastern stories “creation” is a kind of comic accident (the Sumerian story, for example, has the primordial waters as the mother of the gods, and the gods when they emerge start to fight one another, and their blood and corpses become the earth, mountains, animals, and human beings); but in Genesis 1 there is a discrete, intentional, purposeful work of creation; God is already present above the primordial seas, and takes the formless land and then creates, designs, fills, and shapes the heavens and the earth. Each day of creation presents an intentional act of ordered creation, and the six days are even broken down into two parallels; the first three days have God carve out day and night, waters above and below/sky and sea, and dry land from sea; the second three days God fills the day and night with sun, moon, and stars; fills the sky with flying creatures and the sea with swimming creatures, and then populates the dry land with all things that move and creep–the great capstone moment being when God makes human beings in His own Image to rule over the creation He has just made.
This is a beautiful subversion that presents God as the Loving and Good Creator who fills all existence with meaning and purpose–and the place of human beings to serve as stewards of creation and Image-bearers of God within the good creation. And the beautiful themes we see here, we will continue to see throughout the rest of Scripture; because of the way Scripture beautifully interweaves the central themes of God’s redemptive power and work, all pointing to Jesus Christ.
Did the Bible Copy Other Religious Myths and Legends? | Crosswalk.com