We have been reading Dr. Charles Pellegrino’s book, ‘Return to Sodom & Gomorrah’, again, and the content is littered with certain references concerning the writing of the Bible
We may not have paid much attention to it in our previous reading of the book but it seems that every chapter has multiple mentions, whether directly or indirectly, that the Hebrew Bible writers copied their content from other nations.
The interesting fact, and this is NOT limited to Dr. Pellegrino and his books, is that every person making this claim never provides any credible, verifiable, and real physical evidence to support their claims.
Dr. Pellegrino never does in his work and neither do atheists or other unbelievers who dismiss the Bible as a reliable historical work. They make the claim that the Hebrew authors copied but never back it up.
Even the so-called circumstantial evidence, for example, the Gilgamesh Epic and other ancient tablets, have no connection to the Hebrew writers. For another example, the Gilgamesh Epic was said to have been written somewhere between 1300 and 1000 BC.
The Israelites were not captives in Babylon until the 6th century BC. There are no records stating that any of the Hebrews knew of the Gilgamesh Epic or even read it. It is possible that the Epic disappeared from Babylonian life long before the Israelites were taken to Babylon as captives.
The same goes for any ancient tablet that is similar to specific biblical content. Yes, the OT may have been assembled into one canon long after those ancient extra-biblical tablets were written, but Chronology has nothing to do with which writing is original.
We discussed this issue at length in our Book Archaeology & the Believer. Being older does not necessarily mean being original. The same goes for being the first discovered.
The Akkadian version of the text was discovered at Nineveh, in the ruins of the library of Ashurbanipal, in 1849 by the archaeologist Austin Henry Layard. Layard’s expedition was part of a mid-19th century initiative of European institutions and governments to fund expeditions to Mesopotamia to find physical evidence to corroborate events described in the Bible.
What these explorers found instead, however, was that the Bible – previously thought to be the oldest book in the world and comprised of original stories – actually drew upon much older Sumerian myths. (source)
As you can see, the conclusion found in the 2nd paragraph is done without any evidence except one lone tablet that had been buried for thousands of years. That is a key to this issue.
If the Gilgamesh or the Sumerian accounts were original, why were they hidden and buried for thousands of years? The Bible has been in plain site for millennia. This argument applies to the books comprising the Nag Hammadi Library.
If those books were divinely inspired and part of the biblical canons, why were they discarded and buried for over 2000 years? Why were they not popular and purchased as frequently as the Bible has been?
No matter the answer to those questions, the existence of similar extra-biblical stories to biblical accounts does not imply or prove that the Hebrew writers copied.
As we have said many times before, the book Mesopotamia & the Bible has shown that it was the Old Babylonians who had the reputation for copying other people’s works. That is evidence that is not found in the Hebrew writers.
We can talk about the idea that the OT was not compiled until somewhere between the 7th and 5th centuries BC. We have read many scholars and archaeologists who make this claim.
Yet, like the copying claim, those archaeologists and scholars provide no verifiable, credible physical evidence to support their claim. These same scholars, etc., also demand that physical extra-biblical evidence be presented to support biblical accounts.
But refuse to produce any evidence for their claims. The extra-biblical evidence supporting the Biblical record is found in all those ancient tablets that scholars, etc., claim the Hebrew writers copied from.
We dealt with this in the same book mentioned earlier. Noah and his family would have told the truth about their experiences and what took place in ancient history. Then as people drifted from God they changed the true accounts to fit their beliefs.
In other words, the biblical content came before the ancient tablets were written and those ancient tablets were based on the accounts told by Noah and his family. They did not predate the OT but copied from the true records that were finally placed in a written biblical canon.
A later compilation is not verifiable, physical evidence that the Hebrew Writers copied. The compilation was probably done to replace older written works or to add new books as they were written (long before the 5th to 7th centuries BC).
Writing materials wear out so that there is no record of their existence. That fact explains why we cannot find earlier compilations of the biblical content proving it is the original and all ancient tablets are edited copies.
Then many scholars archaeologists, etc., dismiss the early biblical accounts, claiming they were created from oral tradition. They do not trust the biblical content because of this claim.
However, it seems that the Gilgamesh Epic was also a product of oral tradition:
The Epic of Gilgamesh did likewise as it is informed by tales, no doubt originally passed down orally, and finally written down 700-1000 years after the historical king’s reign.(Ibid)
If they can’t trust the biblical content because they claim it was based on oral re-telling of the stories, then these same scholars, etc., should not trust the content found in the Gilgamesh Epic. Nor should they think that the ancient Israelites would trust it either.
On top of this, what compels scholars and archaeologists, etc., to believe that the ancient Israelites would even consider revising secular tales and incorporating them into their holy books?
It doesn’t make sense for the Israelites to do that. Everyone would know the accounts would be fake and would not accept them. If the ancient writers were using that to control their people, they would have died off by the time the source of the accounts was forgotten and finally accepted as Israelite true history.
In other words, those who have been charged with writing the bible to control others would have died off long before the content could be used to control others. It is not logical for the Israelites to implement this strategy.
But again, all these claims that the Israelites copied are made without any supporting, verifiable, credible, and reliable physical evidence. There are no ancient records from ancient Israel or neighboring countries, including conquerors of Israel that expose these writings as frauds.
The claims are made based on the personal beliefs of scholars, archaeologists, and so on. They are not based on historical facts or even ancient extra-biblical references. that is not enough to discard and disbelieve the Bible.
We could say that those scholars and archaeologists, etc., are trying to control the people and what they believe by creating these false claims. They do this because they are deceived by evil and do not know any better.
The Bible is the true word of God, it is completely original, and all other authors copied from the Bible and changed the content to fit what they believed. You will notice that not one of those extra-biblical copies ever made it into the religious writings of the author’s nations.
That fact means that it would not make sense for the Israelites to incorporate false tales into their Holy Book. We can trust the biblical record because it is true, factual, and original.
It is a book that requires faith, not evidence to believe. That is because the physical evidence needed will not appear any time soon.
theoarch 