To What Extent Have Other Mythologies Influenced The Bible?

[LogicalFallacy]

I find, during my research, that there is conflicting information on whether or not certain biblical stories were copied, or at least heavily influenced by other religions.

 

An example is the comparison made between the stories of Jesus and Horus (Egyptian god) I have seen people try and draw direct comparisons (Born of a virgin on 25 December, visited by wise me, etc.)

 

However in reading the actual myth it is hard to draw a direct comparison in this case - I wonder whether anybody else has come across this? I feel that if one is to state why one doesn't believe in Jesus then the reasons must be sound, not based on comparisons that could be suspect or downright incorrect.

 

In saying that, while reading this site: http://www.egyptianmyths.net/mythisis.htmI found the part below and I thought it sound familiar.

 

"Rejoice, you who dwell in Edfu! Horus the great god, the lord of the sky, has slain the enemy of his father! Eat the flesh of the vanquished, drink the blood of the red hippopotamus, burn his bones with fire! Let him be cut in pieces, and the scraps be given to the cats, and the offal to the reptiles!"

 

Lo and behold: Revelations 19:18

"Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God; That ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great."

 

Certainly not word for word, but a remarkable general similarity there.

 

And this is what I have found - it's not so much that the bible directly "copies" other myths, but that the general stories and contexts are similar enough to determine the bible is not unique. In fact I find Chinese mythology to be far more unique than the bible.

 

Anyone else found this, or perhaps has better info? Maybe there is direct comparisons, but my sources are not correct.

[LogicalFallacy]

To add to this I found this site, which seems to answer one of my questions - it appears that the comparisons between Jesus and Horus are false, as pointed out about 2/3 of the way down this page: http://www.ancient.eu/Horus/

 

However the writer does say that Christianity was influenced by the Cult of Isis, which I think is obvious when you take the bible as a whole and compare it to various other religions there is a common thread running though them.

[Blood]

There certainly are some parallels between Jesus and Osiris (not Horus) -- resurrected from the dead, judges the dead, etc. 

 

The immortals in Egypt carried the ankh, which is a cross with a loop at the top (identical to the Coptic Christian church's cross). 

 

The Old Testament, especially, is loaded with mythemes common to the Ancient Near East and Greece. Phillip Wajdenbaum wrote a book about this recently, Argonauts of the Desert. Another goodie is Old Testament Parallels by Victor H. Matthews. There are lots of books and papers out there if you really want to research the subject. Most Biblical commentaries are actually pretty good about this as well, though you have to break through the layers of apologetics. 

 

Myth, Legend, and Custom in the Old Testament by Theodore Gaster (based on the work of James G. Frazer) is a huge compendium of parallels between Biblical mythemes and world literature and folklore. 

 

I wouldn't pay much attention to internet sites about this subject, most of them are unreliable. 

 

Another thing to be wary of is how non-Christian ancient texts are translated. Until 40-50 years ago, translators would always use faux Early Modern English for translation of any Akkadian, Egyptian, etc., religious text, presumably believing the "beautiful" language of the King James Bible would be appropriate for every other ancient religious text. And so you get a lot of words like "lord" and "god" and "sacrament" in these non-Christian texts which are, for the most part, inappropriate or questionable. In most cases, the most recent translation will be in plain English and will not try to pretend it was translated in 1600. 

[rjn]

There are rarely any 1:1 correspondences between even closely related cultures and their myths, so it's not like you can say "That thing right there, X, is totally like this thing here, Z". There are recurring themes and symbols though, some of which seem to be more or less universal,  whereas others only occur in related cultures in the Near East.

[LogicalFallacy]

I found another crossover today, or at least similar theme:
 
The Greek mythos has a story of war between the titans (Old gods) and the Gods (younger gods). The war is fought, the God's win, titans are imprisoned. This was written 8-7th BCE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theogony
 
So we know the new Testament was largely written in Greek. We come to the book of Revelations and:

"7 And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,
8 And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven.
9 And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him."

 

So possible influence from the Greeks there.

 

Note there is no reference in the Old Testament to any war in heaven. The references in Isaiah about Lucifer being cast out of heaven are mistranslations and are not actually referring to the "Dragon, Devil, Satan" in Revelations.
 

[rjn]

LF: that conflict between the Titans and Olympic gods is a reflection of the widespread theme of the Chthonic ("Earthly") forces vs that of the Heavenly ones. It's also closely linked with the idea of Order vs Chaos. Pagan mythologies are rarely as absolute as Christianity though in their dualism, so the Titanic forces (including the Asuras of Hinduism, Jötun/Thurs of Germanic/Norse paganism and a host of other mythologies) might serve some benevolent roles from time to time. In Norse mythology, there's also a "war in the heavens", between that of the Vanir Gods and the Aesir. The Vanir (Frey and Freya, Njord among others)  are mostly connected to the Earth and fertility cults, whereas the Aesir (Odin, Thor, Tyr and many others) are more focused on functions like War and Law. The Vanir lose the War but are eventually adopted into the host of the Aesir and the two join forces against Chaos, the forces of the Giants (Jötnar/Thurs=Titans). The War between the Vanir and the Aesir is probably a reflection of a major change in Nordic society, where the role of Warrior and the sovereignty of the Kings increased in social importance and prestige at the expense of the regular farmer and hunter.

 

A recurring theme in MANY mythologies is that of a heavenly diety engaged in combat with a force of chaos, usually symbolized by a serpent or dragon, and often connected with water in some way, like the Sea. In the OT, there's El vs Leviathan, a serpent of the Sea. In the closely related (to Hebrew religion) Caananite religion, you've got the Sky-God Hadad vs Lotan. In the rest of the World, there's Thor vs Jörmungandr, Teshub vs Illuyanka (Anatolian mythology), Indra vs Vritra (Hinduism) and the list goes on and on. Take note that ALL those Gods are connected to things like the Sky, Lightning, Storms etc, whereas serpents/snakes are clearly Earth-bound creatures.

[LogicalFallacy]

rjn, you've certainly done your research here. I'm only brushing the surface yet.

 

Thanks for the update. Like many of the themes we see, they are across many mythologies. Ones off the top of my head now are Massive Flood, god wars/wars in heaven, death, burial and resurrection of gods, sons of gods.

 

There are probably many more themes that early humans used to explain or try and bring sense to their limited worldview. I like that if one studies them carefully you can see progress and change in societies. 

 

Probably if humans survive long enough researches will be able to look back on Christianity and see that it was one ruling and violent, but societal thought and change altered the religion to where now the main message is god is love.

 

Who knows, in time an historian may be able to point to the period where religion was abandoned altogether and a planet wide rejection of any gods took place. We can only imagine/dream of this.

[Blood]

LF: that conflict between the Titans and Olympic gods is a reflection of the widespread theme of the Chthonic ("Earthly") forces vs that of the Heavenly ones. It's also closely linked with the idea of Order vs Chaos. Pagan mythologies are rarely as absolute as Christianity though in their dualism, so the Titanic forces (including the Asuras of Hinduism, Jötun/Thurs of Germanic/Norse paganism and a host of other mythologies) might serve some benevolent roles from time to time. In Norse mythology, there's also a "war in the heavens", between that of the Vanir Gods and the Aesir. The Vanir (Frey and Freya, Njord among others)  are mostly connected to the Earth and fertility cults, whereas the Aesir (Odin, Thor, Tyr and many others) are more focused on functions like War and Law. The Vanir lose the War but are eventually adopted into the host of the Aesir and the two join forces against Chaos, the forces of the Giants (Jötnar/Thurs=Titans). The War between the Vanir and the Aesir is probably a reflection of a major change in Nordic society, where the role of Warrior and the sovereignty of the Kings increased in social importance and prestige at the expense of the regular farmer and hunter.

 

A recurring theme in MANY mythologies is that of a heavenly diety engaged in combat with a force of chaos, usually symbolized by a serpent or dragon, and often connected with water in some way, like the Sea. In the OT, there's El vs Leviathan, a serpent of the Sea. In the closely related (to Hebrew religion) Caananite religion, you've got the Sky-God Hadad vs Lotan. In the rest of the World, there's Thor vs Jörmungandr, Teshub vs Illuyanka (Anatolian mythology), Indra vs Vritra (Hinduism) and the list goes on and on. Take note that ALL those Gods are connected to things like the Sky, Lightning, Storms etc, whereas serpents/snakes are clearly Earth-bound creatures.

 

 

"Lotan" is probably the same as "Leviathan." Both are translated as LTN in their native languages, I think.

 

It's interesting that Yahweh's triumph over a sea monster in primordial times does not occur in Genesis, but does surface in the Psalms, Job and Isaiah. 

[rjn]

Yes, Lotan and Leviathan are etymologically connected, and L-T-N would be the tri-consonantal root. I believe it means "curled" or something like that. Semitic languages are fairly transparent in their relations to one another.