Friday, February 16, 2007

The Bible and Mythology

In 2006 I decided to do something I'd always wanted to do in life - read the Bible from start to finish. I'd studied branches of science, astronomy, and physics for over a decade in efforts to answer certain philosophical questions, but felt like I came to the end of the road. I then decided to start a new journey in theology, as this was something I had done very little of up to that point and was curious what was on the other side of my search.

In my early readings through the Bible, I slowly became pestered by a nagging little voice in the back of my head that kept wondering why mythological references were made in the Bible. Psalms, Job, and Isaiaha all make reference to Leviathan (a mythical underwater creature that developed in other ancient near eastern cultures). The book of Jobb makes mention to Behemothc, possibly a mythical animal of powerful and large proportion. What did this mean? I finally fessed up to the nagging little voice and had to wonder - was Judaism simply an evolution of ancient near eastern mythology? The more I thought about this, the more similarities I saw in beliefs and practices between the two. Take the Ugaritic (a culture in the Canaanite region) religion for example. They believed in multiple gods - the "Chief" god El as the "Father of mankind", and Hadad as the god of heaven. Do some of these concepts sound familiar? The following question plagued me for the next few weeks of my life: Had I simply been reading man-made fables that evolved from some ancient near eastern towns?

Read on.

In 2006 I visited the Mayan ruins in the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico. I learned about the ancient culture's customs, beliefs, practices, and religion. I viewed the altars where they offered sacrifices to their gods, burned blood, and burned incense. I viewed the public areas where their anointed priests taught to the congregation. I explored what I could of their half-excavated temples. As I viewed these areas and reviewed their practices, I noted a striking similarity to the practices of ancient Judaism. Temples for prayer, sacrificial ceremonies, anointed priests, burning blood on an altar, burning incense on an altar; the similarities go on and on. At an objective level, one must admit these practices are quite unique.

The Mayan civilization dates back to about 1800 BC. Judaism dates back to around 2000 BC. This is what really hit me on that cloudy day in the middle of a jungle in Mexico - two completely separate cultures, on completely opposite corners of the world, employing nearly identical practices at nearly the same time in history - with no way of communicating with each other. What's going on here?

It turns out very little was done regarding religious beliefs or practices in the Stone Age. Burials were observed, but that was about it. Folks didn't seem to worry too much about who or what to worship, what happened after death, etc. Usher in the Bronze Age - the abandoning of nomadic living, and the organization of villages and localization of shelter, food, and drink.

Here's where it gets interesting.

Imagine for a moment that I skidaddled over to my local WalMart, bought a globe of the earth and installed thousands of tiny light bulbs across each of the continents. Now suppose each tiny light bulb represents a society that holds religious beliefs and practices nearly identical to those I described of the Mayans, Ugarits, Hebrews, etc. Worshipping supernatural power(s) that created the universe, sacrificing to the supernatural power(s), burning blood and incense on altars of stone, praying in temples, etc. Basically when the Bronze Age begins, the little light bulbs on my WalMart globe illuminate nearly simultaneously. Societies all across the world seemed to act in a horribly similar manner in relation to religion, at basically the same time. And of course these societies are separated by thousands of miles - and by water - with no real way to communicate with each other.

So what does this mean? Perhaps it was merely a coincidence that thousands of societies all across the world began employing nearly identical religious beliefs and practices at nearly the same time in history - for the first time in history. However I'd like to see the Vegas odds on that one. I find the most logical and probable answer to be that all these beliefs and practices originated from one central source. The variations from culture to culture on an objective level are too slight to suggest otherwise.

Just what was that one central source? I'll let you be the judge. But I find this phenomenon deliciously curious, and hope that, if nothing else, it flicks a little lightbulb on in your own mind.



a Psalm 74:13-14, Job 41, Isaiah 27:1
b Job 40
c Some equate Behemoth with the hippopotamus

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