Did Jesus Christ Actually Exist?

[blü 2]

I envision the historic Jesus as a MLK Jr, for his people, for his time. The unrest against Roman occupation was growing. He was preaching "give to Ceasar what is Ceasar's," to remain humble, meek, strong in faith, and strong in love of each other. To live for today, not worry about the needs or the troubles of tomorrow, for eventually the World to Come, the utopia dream of his people, would be.

In Mark, Matthew and Luke Jesus promises that the Kingdom will be established on earth within the lifetime of some of his hearers. John doesn't mention it, probably because by the 90s CE it was obviously a dead letter.

A mere 40 years or so later, his truth was proven in the total destruction of the 2nd temple and the city of Jerusalem.

In Mark 13:2, Jesus foretells the destruction of Jerusalem. This tells us that the gospel of Mark wasn't written till after 70 CE. Other evidence tells us it wasn't written till 75 CE or later.

 

[Spice]

In Mark, Matthew and Luke Jesus promises that the Kingdom will be established on earth within the lifetime of some of his hearers. John doesn't mention it, probably because by the 90s CE it was obviously a dead letter.


In Mark 13:2, Jesus foretells the destruction of Jerusalem. This tells us that the gospel of Mark wasn't written till after 70 CE. Other evidence tells us it wasn't written till 75 CE or later.

Yep, that's why I stated: "And then, the majority of his new followers, with Paul at the lead, turned his message by mixing in the politically safer Hellenist's tales."
With Mark being determined as the earliest dated Gospel (65-80 CE), it's pretty clear the writer's "fixed" the HJ's message to coincide with the reality of their times. And certainly more fixes came along by the time the Council canonized their choices.

 

[joelr]

Try shortening your posts.

Wow, here is a mind blowing thought. If you don't want to read my post, don't read it. Meanwhile try worrying about yourself and your content, which is your business. If you had a shred of evidence maybe you wouldn't have to make personal attacks on post length and you could actually take one thing in my post and provide evidence against it.
As if it's my fault there is so much good evidence that religions are borrowed mythology. Hey, while you're at it, maybe you could write to Dr Grier and see if he could lessen his knowledge on evidence that Christianity is just using Persian theology?

 

[joelr]

Maybe you should try telling that to those here who believe they can communicate with the dead.

I would gladly tell that if I knew someone who actually thinks that. Because they can contact several people whom I made a pact with that if the afterlife is true they have a code word to tell a medium.
And yeah, no cold reading, no hints, no "I'm getting a male energy, did anyone lose a father figure???" "I'm getting a sense it was because of something in the chest area they passed over from?" "No?" Ok, that must be a different spirit". Then I'm getting a message it was something of a long illness (guessing cancer after heart attack failed), is that correct?, Yes, that's correct, wow I'm good."

If you think cold reading is anything but a scam then you have been taken in by fraud. Or you could get the code word for me. I also have a 14 digit number from pi that any spirit could tell a medium and post here for me.
Yeah, I didn't think so.

Who they think are not really dead. You can show them how wrong they are from "Persian" belief systems. Anyway, have a nice day.

Did you find this to be some sort of brilliant "burn"? Because it really fell flat.
Cold readers have nothing to do with the Persian belief system. It's a skill, just like psychic reading. Your post doesn't even make sense.
Christianity was occupied by the Persians. And over the next few centuries they amazingly switched their religious beliefs to exactly the Persian beliefs. And they were not even close. Satan was an agent of Yahweh. The dead slept in Sheol. Yahweh was under El who gave him Israel.

In Persia they had a single, uncreated God. Who allowed freewill to humans so they could choose to be good. God and satan were at eternal war and a final battle on earth would defeat Satan, all followers would resurrect and live in bliss and a world savior would save humanity. Born from a virgin. Those are a few of the things Judaism had nothing even close. Yet Christianity has all of them. Huh? What a weird coincidence?
It's almost like the Hebrews lived with the Persians for several centuries and slowly adopted those myths into their beliefs and folk tales. Add the Greeks to the mix and you get the NT.

It's not my problem those are facts and the evidence points strongly to the NT being a Jewish version of Persian/Greek myth.
So YOU are the person who follows Persian folklore. You follow it through the people who borrowed it. It doesn't become real because the Israelites started using it. I would be annoyed as well if I was told the story and then I looked into actual historical evidence and found this out.
I don't blame you for being cranky. It bummed me out at first as well.

But your burn, terrible. It has to at least make sense first.
Anyway, do you have any evidence?

 

[joelr]

Sorry, you sound too biased.

Because I follow scholarship and follow the sources they give to check the evidence for myself? That doesn't make sense for being "biased" so it looks like you are actually just saying "I know you are but what am I".
If you are not interested in debating or discussing why are you responding?

Not evil to torture Job? Even if Satan can't do anything without God allowing it, it does not mean he could not be evil.

Satan is a myth, the modern version is a copy of the Persian devil. But didn't you say Satan was the serpent? So Yahweh gave him permission to tempt Eve?

I think one of the first ideas of resurrection comes from Genesis 5.

Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.
Gen 5:21–24

That isn't resurrection at all? That is a living person being taken up to a mythical realm.


Also, this sounds like Lord of the Rings:

These recount how Enoch was taken up to Heaven and was appointed guardian of all the celestial treasures, chief of the archangels, and the immediate attendant on the Throne of God. He was subsequently taught all secrets and mysteries and, with all the angels at his back, fulfills of his own accord whatever comes out of the mouth of God, executing His decrees. Some esoteric literature, such as 3 Enoch, identifies Enoch as Metatron, the angel which communicates God's word. In consequence, Enoch was seen, by this literature and the Rabbinic kabbalah of Jewish mysticism, as the one who communicated God's revelation to Moses, and, in particular, as the dictator of the Book of Jubilees.

Don't see any good reason to think so.

Are you saying you don't understand the difference between early Judaism concepts of afterlife and later Greek influenced ideas?

Or do you just have no response to what I'm showing you? Because I just gave you evidence. You are not debunking it or offering counter points? You are just saying "nope" and covering your ears and eyes.
again, why are you bothering to respond?

Sorry, I don't think you are right.

I'm sensing a pattern here. I give evidence, you don't respond, don't offer counter evidence, do nothing except say "nope". So debating your religion isn't your thing I guess.

Also, It's not "me", I'm going by the general mainstream opinions of historical scholars on most of this. So if you are going to call out a field of study maybe have an argument?

 

[joelr]

"Not uniform" means that before the flood there could have been many different layers of earth (=dry land). And the end results shows it was so.

Nope, ruled out by geology. The strata is dated as being laid out over millions of years.


Geochronology


Geochronology is the science of determining the absolute age of rocks, fossils, and sediments by a variety of techniques. These methods indicate that the Earth as a whole is about 4.54 billion years old, and that the strata that, according to flood geology, were laid down during the Flood some 6,000 years ago, were actually deposited gradually over many millions of years.

It is basically circular reasoning, based on assumption of the composition of the sample when it was formed.

Is what creationists probably told you. They forgot to tell you that is long outdated information. This explains the "circular argument pretty well".


-In and of itself, a fossil does not necessarily provide a whole lot of information about the age of a rock. Not at first anyways (and more about that in an instant - hold that thought). Lets say you are looking at a rock unit of unknown age, and you make the very first fossil discovery in those units, and Woot! It's a newly discovered species, never seen anywhere before ... you celebrate, and once the hangover lifts you get back to work. What does this fossil say about the age of these rocks? Pretty much nothing, really.

Lets push the example a bit further. Lets say further study brings forth 2 other new fossil species, one of which is only found lower in the sequence (so in older rocks) than the frist one, and the other only in rocks higher up in the sequence (so younger rocks) ... lets call the oldest "A", the middle one "B" and the youngest "C". You still don't know the age of the rocks. BUT you now have a tool to position rocks in time relatively to these fossil species. Finding species A, B or C elsewhere gives you a relative age.

This was the state of affairs of geochronology & stratigraphy before radiometric dating. Pretty much all of the fossil record was laid out in tables describing columns of rock, and their ranges were expressed in terms of first and last appearance. It was a powerful tool. But it couldn't tell you the date in absolute terms.

That changed with the discovery of radioactivity and when this translated in the first absolute geochronological methods. These are based on physical processes, specifically the ratio of mother to daughter elements in minerals which are highly resistant and not susceptible to leakage of daughter elements. This allows you to pinpoint an elapsed delay since that mineral formed, an actual chronometer by any other name, which provide an absolute age. Although there are several methods, my very favorite is U-Pb on zircons, which is pretty much our standard in terms of reliability and accuracy. Ever since these methods became perfected, we've been building a database of sites where rocks were dated in absolute terms. These points were then used to calibrate the fossil record in terms of absolute dates, thus converting the fossil record from merely a relative dating tool to a pretty accurate absolute one.

Yuor response to this:

"
It doesn't matter how it happened. A huge flood would still effect lower and higher rock layers the same. And they do know because it says so in the Bible. Everything you are claiming is wrong.
"

is a emoji?

Again, it doesn't matter how it happened, a world flood would have impacted the world in many ways and there was no flood according to many lines of evidence. For people who care about sorts of things like evidence, truth and so on. For others, you are going to believe what you want to be true and that's that. I don't see the point of debate if one doesn't care about backing up claims and searching for truth?

Did you just want to make smiley faces at people?

So, you disagree that clouds cool planet?

Um, no I actually AGREE WITH ALL SCIENTISTS WHO SHOW THE MATH that a world flood would completely cook the earth.

Here is an actual scientists explaining what would happen. But I care about what is actually true so I have to pay attention to pesky details like evidence, math, knowledge and science.

They differ because of their location. In this case one reason could be that the ice age, that was the result of the flood, had different influence in different areas.

There was no ice age since the generations that supposedly came from the flood. Did you think the entire field of geology doesn't know what an ice age is?

 

[joelr]

The problem is, even if there is similarity, it is not a proof for copying, because people could easily have the similar ideas by other ways also.

I didn't say it was "proof".
But it's overwhelmingly likely.

Genesis follows Mesopotamian myths and that is demonstrated by literary techniques that show it's dependent on it.

Persia invades and after this we get their theology in Judaism and hugely in Christianity.

The Hellenistic Greeks invade and we get an exact copy of a Greek dying/rising savior demigod mystery religion. Down to every detail. Just a Jewish version. In any other situation you would be saying of course they borrowed ideas? But you are holding onto a belief that this is a real story so you cannot accept what is super obvious.

But please explain how these "other ways" could account for all these borrowings. There is more as well. Moses childhood story is found in older Egyptian deities childhood stories. One of Proverbs is verbatim an Egyptian book of wisdom. An older book as well.

Which is exactly what Genesis is speaking of.

There is 4 problems with that:
1) Earliest found it not necessary the earliest that ever was.

Yes the Sumerian civilization is the oldest human civilization. These myths go back to Sumerian myth.

The Israelites emerged from Canaanite civilization around 1200 BCE. Before that there was no Israelite. When they made up stories for their myth they created people from the distant past like Adam and Abraham. A common theme in every myth. No evidence it was real.

2) If the story is true, all ancient people would have had knowledge about it, and could have written about it independently, without copying others.

First, Genesis is dependent on Mesopotamian myths. Intertextuality demonstrates this. The myths that are similar are the direct versions the Israelite kings had access to. Other versions were not as similar. It's clear and 100% accepted in scholarship that Genesis is a re-working of older stories. That isn't contested.

3) It is possible people had the story orally long before they wrote it down.

Everyone had a different version, different gods. Some had multiple gods. If there were one actual story the facts would reflect that. But there was no world flood. Geology and physics have ruled it out 100%. It's a Sumerian myth.

4) The texts can be wrongly dated.

No, Cuniform tablets are far older than the Israelite writings in Hebrew? Now you are randomly disagreeing with every scholar who works on his stuff? Absurd? Genesis was written about 600 BCE. Mesopotamian tablets are over 1 thousand years older.

Also, you are not presenting evidence to back any of this up, you are just making up claims trying to rescue ancient stories.


"could be"??? Ok, I can play that, Zeus "could be" the actual true God of the universe and he's mad at all of us.
Why would I not want to do that? Because I have no EVIDENCE for it. Because I care about what is true. You seem to just want this story to be true and don't care about evidence.

 

[1213]

But please explain how these "other ways" could account for all these borrowings.

I don't have enough reason to believe there is borrowings. And if there is, I believe the others copied from Jews.

There is more as well. Moses childhood story is found in older Egyptian deities childhood stories. One of Proverbs is verbatim an Egyptian book of wisdom. An older book as well.

Please tell where could that childhood story be found? It is likely evidence for the story of Moses in the Bible.

Yes the Sumerian civilization is the oldest human civilization.

No one else existed before Sumerians?

The Israelites emerged from Canaanite civilization around 1200 BCE. Before that there was no Israelite. When they made up stories for their myth they created people from the distant past like Adam and Abraham.

The name Israel is given to Jacob at one point. Obviously Jacob had also parents, and grand parents. Thus, the history of Israel doesn't begin from Jacob. I don't believe they made up stories.

Everyone had a different version, different gods. Some had multiple gods. If there were one actual story the facts would reflect that. But there was no world flood. Geology and physics have ruled it out 100%.

I think they are wrong.

No, Cuniform tablets are far older than the Israelite writings in Hebrew? Now you are randomly disagreeing with every scholar who works on his stuff? Absurd? Genesis was written about 600 BCE. Mesopotamian tablets are over 1 thousand years older.

Even if we would believe those dates, it is possible that there are older versions that just have not been found. And it is also possible that the stories were passed on orally long before written.

Because I care about what is true.

Then why you make claims that you can't prove are true?

 

[1213]

...Lets push the example a bit further. Lets say further study brings forth 2 other new fossil species, one of which is only found lower in the sequence (so in older rocks) than the frist one, and the other only in rocks higher up in the sequence (so younger rocks) ... lets call the oldest "A", the middle one "B" and the youngest "C". You still don't know the age of the rocks. BUT you now have a tool to position rocks in time relatively to these fossil species. Finding species A, B or C elsewhere gives you a relative age.

The problem with that is, what if the flood event flipped many layers? It is possible that before the flood, there was already many layers and many animals trapped in the layers. And when the flood came, it carried all that stuff and put it in different order than before the flood?

That changed with the discovery of radioactivity and when this translated in the first absolute geochronological methods. These are based on physical processes, specifically the ratio of mother to daughter elements in minerals which are highly resistant and not susceptible to leakage of daughter elements. This allows you to pinpoint an elapsed delay since that mineral formed, an actual chronometer by any other name, which provide an absolute age. Although there are several methods, my very favorite is U-Pb on zircons, which is pretty much our standard in terms of reliability and accuracy....

The problem with that is, it is possible that there were already daughter elements in the sample. Without knowing the original composition, it is not possible to give right dates.

Um, no I actually AGREE WITH ALL SCIENTISTS WHO SHOW THE MATH that a world flood would completely cook the earth.

They should not be called scientists, if they make so silly claims.

 

[1213]

...So Yahweh gave him permission to tempt Eve?

I believe the serpent could not do anything without God allowing it. But, in this case it may be that the serpent didn't ask can he do that.

That isn't resurrection at all? That is a living person being taken up to a mythical realm.

What is the difference to be resurrected to a kingdom of Heaven?

Are you saying you don't understand the difference between early Judaism concepts of afterlife and later Greek influenced ideas?

I say, I don't think they have ideas that come from other cultures.

Or do you just have no response to what I'm showing you? Because I just gave you evidence. You are not debunking it or offering counter points? You are just saying "nope" and covering your ears and eyes.
again, why are you bothering to respond?

The problem is, I don't think you have given any real evidence. You give claims and opinions that can easily be wrong, and we don't have any way to check are they true.

What would you say if I would say: "God is real, prove me wrong"? What you are doing is about the same.

 

[joelr]

I don't have enough reason to believe there is borrowings. And if there is, I believe the others copied from Jews.

Do you want more evidence? Books, lectures, videos, all from scholars. You haven't given any evidence as to why all these fields are incorrect and you just know more. Not one thing.

I assume this is just all denial.
Here is a talk on Hellenism borrowings, timestamped, please tell me where he is wrong and what sources you use to back up your ideas.


Death & Afterlife: Do Christians Follow Plato rather than Jesus or Paul?
Dr James Tabor

5:40 1st Hebrew view of cosmology and afterlife. The dead are sleeping in Sheol, earth is above, the firmament is above that and divides the upper ocean from falling to earth,


7:50 A linear version emerged with time and an end times and final Judgment.

Genesis says you will return to dust


9:00 Translation of Genesis 2:6 God breathes the breath of life into Adam (giving him a soul). The actual Hebrew translation is “living-breathing”, meaning all life is this.


10:40 Hellenistic period - the Hebrew religion adopts the Greek ideas.
Sources the Britannica article and explains it’s an excellent resource from an excellent scholar.

13:35 In the Hellenistic period the common perception is not the Hebrew view, it’s the idea that the soul belongs in Heaven.


14:15 The basic Hellenistic idea is taken into the Hebrew tradition. Salvation in the Hellenistic world is how do you save your soul and get to Heaven. How to transcend the physical body.

Greek tomb “I am a child of earth and starry heaven but heaven alone is my home”

15:46 Does this sound familiar, Christian hymns - “this world is not my home, I’m a pilgrim passing through, Jesus will come and take you home”.


Common theme that comes from the Hellenistic religions. Immortal souls trapped in a human body etc…





47:15 Hellenistic Greek view of cosmology


Material world/body is a prison of the soul


Humans are immortal souls, fallen into the darkness of the lower world


Death sets the soul free


No human history, just a cycle of birth, death, rebirth


Immortality is inherent for all humans


Salvation is escape to Heaven, the true home of the immortal soul


Humans are fallen and misplaced


Death is a stripping of the body so the soul can be free


Death is a liberating friend to be welcomed


Asceticism is the moral idea for the soul

49:35 Genesis view


Creation/body very good, procreation good


Humans are “living breathers”, akin to animals, mortal, dust of the earth


Death is dark silent “sleeping in the dust”


Human history moves toward a perfected new age/creation


Salvation is eternal life in the perfected world of the new creation


Humans belong on earth


Resurrection brings a new transformed glorious spiritual body


Death is an enemy


Physical life and sensory pleasures are good

Please tell where could that childhood story be found? It is likely evidence for the story of Moses in the Bible.

Stop, I've given so much evidence and you just pretend it doesn't exist. Now you want more? You are not for real at all.



'But the problem with historical evidence goes much deeper. “Moses himself has about as much historic reality as King Arthur,” British archaeologist Philip Davies famously concluded. A more moderate conclusion comes from the historian Tom Holland: “The likelihood that the biblical story records an actual event is fairly small.”

Cyprian Broodbank, the Disney professor of archaeology at Cambridge University, wrote in his recent history of the Mediterranean that the exodus was “at best a refracted folk memory of earlier expulsions of Levantine people” following the reconquest of the Nile delta by the Egyptian king Ahmose around 1530BC.

This date is about 900 years earlier than the period in which the Hebrew Bible is supposed to have been codified and written down, including its first five books that were supposedly written by Moses himself. There is no archaeological evidence for the biblical story, and certainly no extra-biblical evidence, in Egyptian inscriptions. Not even the Bible account claims that the Israelites were employed as slaves to build the pyramids as they are in Hollywood. They are simply slaves.


Proverbs -

The third unit, 22:17–24:22, is headed "bend your ear and hear the words of the wise". A large part of this section is a recasting of a second-millennium BCE Egyptian work, the Instruction of Amenemope, and may have reached the Hebrew author(s) through an Aramaic translation.

No one else existed before Sumerians?

Not as a civilization with a large city. Humans were hunter gatherers for almost 200,000 years.

The name Israel is given to Jacob at one point. Obviously Jacob had also parents, and grand parents. Thus, the history of Israel doesn't begin from Jacob. I don't believe they made up stories.

Before 1200 BCE they were Canaanite people. DNA tests confirm this. Archaeology confirms this. All religious stories are made up to some degree.

I think they are wrong.

And some people think the Quran is the true word of God. I do not care. I care about what is true and what can be demonstrated, with evidence. Denial is not evidence. It's evidence that you are holding on to beliefs really hard and are not letting them go no matter what. That is the best way to be fooled.
Feel free to get a geophysics degree, write a paper and provide counter evidence as an expert. Until then, like you also do with EVERYTHING ELSE, the experts have more knowledge than laymen. Are you also going to do your own heart surgery is needed? Are you going to build your own 747 when traveling because the engineers are probably wrong?

Even if we would believe those dates, it is possible that there are older versions that just have not been found. And it is also possible that the stories were passed on orally long before written.

There was an oral tradition that started sometime when the Israelites were formed around 1200 BCE. That is still far far later than the Sumerian and Mesopotamian stories were written. An oral folk tale doesn't make something true. The entire human race passed on tales of gods and all types of folklore. Doesn't make it true.

Then why you make claims that you can't prove are true?

I make claims based on the available evidence. The evidence for the things we are talking about is beyond questionable and because of that it's the consensus opinion in Biblical historicity.
I can also say Zeus was a myth. I don't know that 100% but the evidence is good. Same with Biblical deities.

 

[joelr]

The problem with that is, what if the flood event flipped many layers? It is possible that before the flood, there was already many layers and many animals trapped in the layers. And when the flood came, it carried all that stuff and put it in different order than before the flood?

Then the isotope dating would reflect this and show newer rocks higher than older rocks. You don't seem to understand we have these things called oceans and we understand there is massive pressure at the bottom. Layers are not flipped. AND, you have been asking for evidence, when given evidence you deny it AND NOW you want to propose a theory, based on NO SCIENCE, NO EVIDENCE, completely made up, and somehow it's fine for you to do it.
But you ask me for evidence (then ignore it). Why did you become so unbalanced and not follow your own standards you put on others? You get to pull theories with no evidence, unheard of, sound like complete guesses, and think you have answered the question.
This is what desperation from holding a belief in the face of obvious evidence does to people.

The problem with that is, it is possible that there were already daughter elements in the sample. Without knowing the original composition, it is not possible to give right dates.

It's not a problem, if you cared about what was true, you could find this out.


Radiometric dating relies on minerals which lock in place the radioactive element and do not have the daughter element naturally in the mineral. The minerals also have to be resistant to change by natural processes, and also not subject to metamorphic alteration during its existence. This insures that the key elements have not been increased or decreased by these processes, which skews the results. It then compares the ratio of original and daughter elements present. The more daughter element present, the older the mineral since the time the mineral formed.

You are not measuring the absolute age of the atoms present. You are measuring the age of the minerals in the rock which incorporated the atoms at the time of formation.

An example is potassium argon dating. One of the isotopes of potassium that occurs naturally (potassium40) is radioactive with a half life of 1.25 billion years. It is commonly incorporated in various stable minerals. It has multiple forms of decay, and one is electron capture converting potassium40 to argon40. Argon is a noble gas, and is not incorporated in the mineral when formed. The argon40 that gets created cannot escape - it is trapped in the crystal lattice even though not chemically bound. If you find an equal amount of each in a sample, then the mineral was formed 1.25 billion years ago.

Another example is uranium lead dating. It is most reliably done with zircon crystals which incorporate uranium. Uranium decays through a series of steps to lead. Zircon crystals when forming strongly reject any lead in the crystal. Zircons are very tough and long lived. Lead created from uranium remains trapped in the crystal, provided that the uranium is not abnormally concentrated in the zircon. An abnormal number of radiation events can damage the crystal structure, permitting lead to escape, but this can be observed and a different undamaged crystal used. You can measure the ratio of uranium to lead to get the time when the zircon was formed.

Therefore, the actual age of the atoms does not matter - that is not what is being measured.

They should not be called scientists, if they make so silly claims.

Great, a challenge, please watch the video and show me where she gets the calculations wrong.
Please show me the correct calculations and explain what exactly the mistakes are that would lead you to call an expert scientist "silly".


Then you can explain how believing unverified, fictive folk tales about supernatural beings, is more true than understood science isn't the actual silly thing.

You are not even trying. I'm starting to think you are a non-believer posing as a terrible apologist.

 

[joelr]

I believe the serpent could not do anything without God allowing it. But, in this case it may be that the serpent didn't ask can he do that.

Wait a minute, you just said Satan cannot do anything without Yahweh's permission. That is very cut and dry.

Ok, so if the serpent is Satan, how can he do something without Yahweh's permission? You didn't explain it, you just re-stated it.

If there is a case, then it's not true that Satan needs Yahweh's permission to do something, so you were wrong.

What is the difference to be resurrected to a kingdom of Heaven?

Journeying to OZ, Middle Earth of Heaven is not a resurrection. That involves a death, being dead, then being alive again.

The Persians are the first to have a clear version of resurrection after the big god/satan battle on earth.
It made it's way into the NT as Revelation. Persian myth.

I say, I don't think they have ideas that come from other cultures.

You say, but you have been telling little untruths all along and pretending you know more than every expert in every field mentioned and pretending there is no evidence when I provide evidence. Very dishonest.



The ancient Israelites envisaged the universe as a flat disc-shaped Earth floating on water, heaven above, underworld below.[6] Humans inhabited Earth during life and the underworld after death; there was no way that mortals could enter heaven, and the underworld was morally neutral;[7][8] only in Hellenistic times (after c. 330 BCE) did Jews begin to adopt the Greek idea that it would be a place of punishment for misdeeds, and that the righteous would enjoy an afterlife in heaven.[8] In this period too the older three-level cosmology in large measure gave way to the Greek concept of a spherical earth suspended in space at the center of a number of concentric heavens.[9]


Later Jewish thinkers, adopting ideas from Greek philosophy, concluded that God's Wisdom, Word and Spirit penetrated all things and gave them unity.[11] Christianity in turn adopted these ideas and identified Jesus with the Logos (Word): "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1).[12]


Kaiser, Christopher B


Christopher Barina Kaiser is a noted author and scholar, with doctorates in astrophysics and Christian dogmatics.


Steve Parrish is professor emeritus of Old Testament at Memphis Theological Seminary. His primary research interests have been creation theology in the Hebrew Bible and the Book of Psalms.


-During the period of the Second Temple (c.515 BC – 70 AD), the Hebrew people lived under the rule of first the Persian Achaemenid Empire, then the Greek kingdoms of the Diadochi, and finally the Roman Empire.[47] Their culture was profoundly influenced by those of the peoples who ruled them.[47] Consequently, their views on existence after death were profoundly shaped by the ideas of the Persians, Greeks, and Romans.[48][49] The idea of the immortality of the soul is derived from Greek philosophy[49] and the idea of the resurrection of the dead is derived from Persian cosmology.[49] By the early first century AD, these two seemingly incompatible ideas were often conflated by Hebrew thinkers.[49] The Hebrews also inherited from the Persians, Greeks, and Romans the idea that the human soul originates in the divine realm and seeks to return there.[47] The idea that a human soul belongs in Heaven and that Earth is merely a temporary abode in which the soul is tested to prove its worthiness became increasingly popular during the Hellenistic period (323 – 31 BC).[40] Gradually, some Hebrews began to adopt the idea of Heaven as the eternal home of the righteous dead.[40]


(Sanders)




I provided a video with James Tabor on Greek borrowings, you can explain why he's wrong, please source your material. (not happening)

 

[joelr]

The problem is, I don't think you have given any real evidence. You give claims and opinions that can easily be wrong, and we don't have any way to check are they true.

What would you say if I would say: "God is real, prove me wrong"? What you are doing is about the same.

Oh, good, another strawman. 2 fallacies in one statement. But before fallacy #2, we do have ways to check. We have dated information form Greek societies, dated from 300 BCE and on, many different sources, that scholars have read in Greek and found patterns in the religions they influenced before Judiasm. Many scholars, TAbor, Klause, Smith........



Mary Boyce went to Iran to study the text and oral tradition of the Persian religion. Several others did as well.


The Mesopotamian tablets were found and decoded and worked on for over 100 years. There are still things historians do not know, these are very basic things with massive evidence.


We also have countless archaeological digs at temples in Israel.



Yet all that evidence, and you STILL want to special plead and say your folk tale, the thing with NO EVIDENCE is completely reliable. Even if science and real evidence shows it cannot be true. You don't care. You go by "revelations", which are almost certainly fake and made up yet you seem to think you get a huge pass on that. So hypocritical. By your standards you are giving me, your book is total nonsense and not worthy of belief. But you don't hold that position for your beliefs. The evidence must be 100% yet religious text are ZERO % reliable. Exactly why we have so many different versions all claiming to be the one truth. It's absolutely absurd.


The fact you won't apply all these standards to your own beliefs, only arguments against them, shows your confirmation bias is massive.



It's also The unfalsifiability fallacy which occurs when someone makes a claim that is impossible to prove false.

Which is not what I am doing. I would say, I cannot prove you wrong. But I can provide evidence that the stories of this god are borrowings of older stories, which we know to be fiction.


We have massive evidence of this.


Dr Tabor covers a bit in that. Some quotes from scholars above back that up.

Now we can look at the Britannica entry from J.Z. Smith on Hellenism and how it influenced the NT. He is another expert on the subject.


I highlited the specific things we see in Christianity. From Hellenism we could have predicted Christianity and what it would be by combining this list with Judaism.


When the Greeks invaded a nation during the Hellenistic period it caused a change in the local religion. The last version was Christianity. All these nations had a religion similar to Judaism and ended up with a mystery religion more like Christianity. Because they all followed the changes we see below.

wHellenistic religion - Beliefs, practices, and institutions


-the seasonal drama was homologized to a soteriology (salvation concept) concerning the destiny, fortune, and salvation of the individual after death.


-his led to a change from concern for a religion of national prosperity to one for individual salvation, from focus on a particular ethnic group to concern for every human. The prophet or saviour replaced the priest and king as the chief religious figure.


-his process was carried further through the identification of the experiences of the soul that was to be saved with the vicissitudes of a divine but fallen soul, which had to be redeemed by cultic activity and divine intervention. This view is illustrated in the concept of the paradoxical figure of the saved saviour, salvator salvandus.


-Other deities, who had previously been associated with national destiny (e.g., Zeus, Yahweh, and Isis), were raised to the status of transcendent, supreme


-The temples and cult institutions of the various Hellenistic religions were repositories of the knowledge and techniques necessary for salvation and were the agents of the public worship of a particular deity. In addition, they served an important sociological role. In the new, cosmopolitan ideology that followed Alexander’s conquests, the old nationalistic and ethnic boundaries had broken down and the problem of religious and social identity had become acute.




-Most of these groups had regular meetings for a communal meal (Eucharist) that served the dual role of sacramental participation (referring to the use of material elements believed to convey spiritual benefits among the members and with their deity)



-Hellenistic philosophy (Stoicism, Cynicism, Neo-Aristotelianism, Neo-Pythagoreanism, and Neoplatonism) provided key formulations for Jewish, Christian, and Muslim philosophy, theology, and mysticism through the 18th century

- The basic forms of worship of both the Jewish and Christian communities were heavily influenced in their formative period by Hellenistic practices, and this remains fundamentally unchanged to the present time. Finally, the central religious literature of both traditions—the Jewish Talmud (an authoritative compendium of law, lore, and interpretation), the New Testament, and the later patristic literature of the early Church Fathers—are characteristic Hellenistic documents both in form and content.


-Other traditions even more radically reinterpreted the ancient figures. The cosmic or seasonal drama was interiorized to refer to the divine soul within man that must be liberated.


-Each persisted in its native land with little perceptible change save for its becoming linked to nationalistic or messianic movements (centring on a deliverer figure)



-and apocalyptic traditions (referring to a belief in the dramatic intervention of a god in human and natural events)


- Particularly noticeable was the success of a variety of prophets, magicians, and healers—e.g., John the Baptist, Jesus, Simon Magus, Apollonius of Tyana, Alexander the Paphlagonian, and the cult of the healer Asclepius—whose preaching corresponded to the activities of various Greek and Roman philosophic missionaries






You cannot get more clear than that. Everything here is the change from the OT to the NT. It' all Greek theology. But there is much more.






This isn't for you, you are clearly not interested in truth, you are going to just say it not this or that so you can continue believing what you want. You should do that. When you are ready, if ever, to face reality then you can read it with an open mind and try to disprove it with actual evidence. Actually read it and try to find counter evidence. It's exceedingly dishonest to continue to respond to evidence I compiled from scholars through research and hand wave it off, without reasons, evidence, counter claims. It's troll behavior.

 

[1213]

Oh, good, another strawman. 2 fallacies in one statement. But before fallacy #2, we do have ways to check. We have dated information form Greek societies, dated from 300 BCE and on, many different sources, that scholars have read in Greek and found patterns in the religions they influenced before Judiasm. Many scholars, TAbor, Klause, Smith........

The reasons why I don't think your claims are not sufficient are:
1) The dating methods are not reliable.
2) Similarity is not a proof for copying, because people can have similar ideas without doing so. And if there is similarity, one could as well say the others copied from Jews.
3) Oldest found is not necessary the original.

When the Greeks invaded a nation during the Hellenistic period it caused a change in the local religion. The last version was Christianity.

I think that shows one doesn't really know the teachings of Jesus that are based on the Old Testament teachings and direct continuation to it.

 

[1213]

Wait a minute, you just said Satan cannot do anything without Yahweh's permission. That is very cut and dry.

Ok, so if the serpent is Satan, how can he do something without Yahweh's permission?

God's permission, or God allowing it, I think they are essentially the same.

Journeying to OZ, Middle Earth of Heaven is not a resurrection. That involves a death, being dead, then being alive again.

In Biblical point of view this life is the first death.

The Persians are the first to have a clear version of resurrection after the big god/satan battle on earth.

The fist that you know is not necessary the first that had the idea.

The ancient Israelites envisaged the universe as a flat disc-shaped Earth

Sorry, I don't think that is true.

floating on water, heaven above, underworld below.[6] Humans inhabited Earth during life and the underworld after death; there was no way that mortals could enter heaven, and the underworld was morally neutral;[7][8] only in Hellenistic times (after c. 330 BCE) did Jews begin to adopt the Greek idea that it would be a place of punishment for misdeeds, and that the righteous would enjoy an afterlife in heaven.[8]

I think the idea of righteous living eternally is for example in these:

Riches don't profit in the day of wrath, But righteousness delivers from death.
Prov. 11:4
The wicked is brought down in his calamity, But in death, the righteous has a refuge.
Prov. 14:32
Therefore the wicked shall not stand in the judgment, Nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For Yahweh knows the way of the righteous, But the way of the wicked shall perish.
Ps. 1:5-6

And I believe those are much older than Greek ideas.

...adopting ideas from Greek philosophy,...

No good reason to believe they adopted anything.

 

[1213]

An example is potassium argon dating. One of the isotopes of potassium that occurs naturally (potassium40) is radioactive with a half life of 1.25 billion years. It is commonly incorporated in various stable minerals. It has multiple forms of decay, and one is electron capture converting potassium40 to argon40. Argon is a noble gas, and is not incorporated in the mineral when formed. The argon40 that gets created cannot escape - it is trapped in the crystal lattice even though not chemically bound. If you find an equal amount of each in a sample, then the mineral was formed 1.25 billion years ago.

It is possible that argon is formed already in the mix, if it can be formed after the mix. So, is there some way to make sure argon can't in any condition be trapped in the forming minerals?

Another example is uranium lead dating. It is most reliably done with zircon crystals which incorporate uranium. Uranium decays through a series of steps to lead. Zircon crystals when forming strongly reject any lead in the crystal. Zircons are very tough and long lived. Lead created from uranium remains trapped in the crystal, provided that the uranium is not abnormally concentrated in the zircon. An abnormal number of radiation events can damage the crystal structure, permitting lead to escape, but this can be observed and a different undamaged crystal used. You can measure the ratio of uranium to lead to get the time when the zircon was formed.

So, you say that it is not possible to mix lead to Zircon crystals in any condition? Has that been tested? How?

 

[1213]

Do you want more evidence? ... ....it's the consensus opinion in Biblical historicity.

Yes, more evidence, not opinions. It seems to me that you mix up those.

 

[joelr]

The reasons why I don't think your claims are not sufficient are:
1) The dating methods are not reliable.

Please provide 1 historical scholar making the claim that we cannot date the Greek Hellenistic period properly.
We have countless documents, accounts from by Arrian, Plutarch, Diodorus Siculus, Quintus Curtius Rufus, and Justin, coins, mentions from other nations, endless amounts of ways to date the period and the religions. There is no disupte that the mystery religions pre-dated Christianity.

again, its' obvious you are just making stuff up. But the question is why bother? You know it's not true, who are you trying to fool?

2) Similarity is not a proof for copying, because people can have similar ideas without doing so. And if there is similarity, one could as well say the others copied from Jews.

The Jews had 6 centuries to let Yahweh explain Hellenistic beliefs. He didn't. He did however in the NT, after the influence of Greek religions.
Again, there is no doubt Hellenism ENDED around the first century and Christianity was the LAST mystery religion. It's also a strawman to say it's not "proof". I didn't say proof, I said it's extremely likely.

Just randomly looking up "soul" on Wiki

"In Judaism and in some Christian denominations, only human beings have immortal souls. Although immortality is disputed within Judaism and the concept of immortality was most likely influenced by Plato.[3] For example, Thomas Aquinas, borrowing directly from Aristotle's On the Soul, attributed "soul" (anima) to all organisms but argued that only human souls are immortal."


Hellenism transformed Judaism the same way it transformed many other religions. where is your evidence this is not true? Making stuff up just to counter the entire historical field is a huge waste of time.


wHellenistic religion - Beliefs, practices, and institutions

-the seasonal drama was homologized to a soteriology (salvation concept) concerning the destiny, fortune, and salvation of the individual after death.

-his led to a change from concern for a religion of national prosperity to one for individual salvation, from focus on a particular ethnic group to concern for every human. The prophet or saviour replaced the priest and king as the chief religious figure.


-his process was carried further through the identification of the experiences of the soul that was to be saved with the vicissitudes of a divine but fallen soul, which had to be redeemed by cultic activity and divine intervention. This view is illustrated in the concept of the paradoxical figure of the saved saviour, salvator salvandus.


-Other deities, who had previously been associated with national destiny (e.g., Zeus, Yahweh, and Isis), were raised to the status of transcendent, supreme


-The temples and cult institutions of the various Hellenistic religions were repositories of the knowledge and techniques necessary for salvation and were the agents of the public worship of a particular deity. In addition, they served an important sociological role. In the new, cosmopolitan ideology that followed Alexander’s conquests, the old nationalistic and ethnic boundaries had broken down and the problem of religious and social identity had become acute.


-Most of these groups had regular meetings for a communal meal that served the dual role of sacramental participation (referring to the use of material elements believed to convey spiritual benefits among the members and with their deity)


-Hellenistic philosophy (Stoicism, Cynicism, Neo-Aristotelianism, Neo-Pythagoreanism, and Neoplatonism) provided key formulations for Jewish, Christian, and Muslim philosophy, theology, and mysticism through the 18th century


- The basic forms of worship of both the Jewish and Christian communities were heavily influenced in their formative period by Hellenistic practices, and this remains fundamentally unchanged to the present time. Finally, the central religious literature of both traditions—the Jewish Talmud (an authoritative compendium of law, lore, and interpretation), the New Testament, and the later patristic literature of the early Church Fathers—are characteristic Hellenistic documents both in form and content.


-Other traditions even more radically reinterpreted the ancient figures. The cosmic or seasonal drama was interiorized to refer to the divine soul within man that must be liberated.

-Each persisted in its native land with little perceptible change save for its becoming linked to nationalistic or messianic movements (centring on a deliverer figure)


-and apocalyptic traditions (referring to a belief in the dramatic intervention of a god in human and natural events)

- Particularly noticeable was the success of a variety of prophets, magicians, and healers—e.g., John the Baptist, Jesus, Simon Magus, Apollonius of Tyana, Alexander the Paphlagonian, and the cult of the healer Asclepius—whose preaching corresponded to the activities of various Greek and Roman philosophic missionaries

3) Oldest found is not necessary the original.

No the original is the Old Testament which has ZERO Greek Hellenism and Persian influence in the first 5 books.

We have archaeological evidence from all over Israel that the religion the majority followed was not even what's in the OT. Yahweh was usually paired with Ashera a goddess.

I think that shows one doesn't really know the teachings of Jesus that are based on the Old Testament teachings and direct continuation to it.

I am still waiting for evidence.

The scholar Mary Boyce found the Persian religion to have influenced Judaism and other religions in the following ways:


Doctrines taken from Persia into Judiasm.

fundamental doctrines became disseminated throughout the region, from Egypt to the Black Sea: namely that there is a supreme God who is the Creator; that an evil power exists which is opposed to him, and not under his control; that he has emanated many lesser divinities to help combat this power; that he has created this world for a purpose, and that in its present state it will have an end; that this end will be heralded by the coming of a cosmic Saviour, who will help to bring it about; that meantime heaven and hell exist, with an individual judgment to decide the fate of each soul at death; that at the end of time there will be a resurrection of the dead and a Last Judgment, with annihilation of the wicked; and that thereafter the kingdom of God will come upon earth, and the righteous will enter into it as into a garden (a Persian word for which is 'paradise'), and be happy there in the presence of God for ever, immortal themselves in body as well as soul. These doctrines all came to be adopted by various Jewish schools in the post-Exilic period, for the Jews were one of the peoples, it seems, most open to Zoroastrian influences - a tiny minority, holding staunchly to their own beliefs, but evidently admiring their Persian benefactors, and finding congenial elements in their faith. Worship of the one supreme God, and belief in the coming of a Messiah or Saviour, together with adherence to a way of life which combined moral and spiritual aspirations with a strict code of behaviour (including purity laws) were all matters in which Judaism and Zoroastrianism were in harmony; and it was this harmony, it seems, reinforced by the respect of a subject people for a great protective power, which allowed Zoroastrian doctrines to exert their influence. The extent of this influence is best attested, however, by Jewish writings of the Parthian period, when Christianity and the Gnostic faiths, as well as northern Buddhism, all likewise bore witness to the profound effect: which Zoroaster's teachings had had throughout the lands of the Achaernenian empire.




Zoroastrians-Their-Religious-Beliefs-and-Practices-MaryBoyce


None of this was in the OT until after the occupation. This is pretty overwhelming evidence.

 

[joelr]

God's permission, or God allowing it, I think they are essentially the same.

But he didn't give permission. Also that idea of an evil devil is Persian.


Good vs evil


Harsh experience had evidently convinced the prophet that wisdom, justice and goodness were utterly separate by nature from wickedness and cruelty; and in vision he beheld, co-existing with Ahura Mazda, an Adversary, the 'Hostile Spirit', Angra Mainyu, equally uncreated, but ignorant and wholly malign. These two great Beings Zoroaster beheld with prophetic eye at their original, far-off encountering: 'Truly there are two primal Spirits, twins, renowned to be in conflict. In thought and word and act they are two, the good and the bad .... And when these two Spirits first encountered, they created life and not-life, and that at the end the worst existence shall be for the followers of falsehood (drug), but the best dwelling for those who possess righteousness (asha). Of the two Spirits, the one who follows falsehood chose doing the worst things, the Holiest Spirit, who is clad in the hardest stone [i.e. the sky] chose righteousness, and (so shall they all) who will satisfy Ahura Mazda continually '----1\n with just actions' (Y 30.3-5).

'----1\n with just actions' (Y 30.3-5). essential element in this revelation is that the two primal Beings each made a deliberate choice (although each, it seems, according to his own proper nature) between good and evil, an act which prefigures the identical choice which every man must make for himself in this life . The exercise of choice changed the inherent antagonism between the two Spirits into an active one, which expressed itself, at a decision taken by Ahura Mazda, in creation and counter-creation, or, as the prophet put it, in the making of 'life' and 'not-life' (that is,death); for Ahura Mazda knew in his wisdom that if he became Creator and fashioned this world, then the Hostile Spirit would attack it, because it was good, and it would become a battleground for their two forces, and in the end he, God, would win the great struggle there and be able to destroy evil, and so achieve a universe which would be wholly good forever.


God


t Zoroaster went much further, and in a startling departure from accepted beliefs proclaimed Ahura Mazda to be the one uncreated God, existing eternally, and Creator of all else that is good, including all other beneficent divinities.




Hell


The concept of hell, a place of torment presided over by Angra Mainyu, seems to be Zoroaster's own, shaped by his deep sense of the need for justice. • Those few souls 'whose false (things) and what are just balance' (Y 33. I) go to the 'Place of the Mixed Ones', Misvan Gatu, where, as in . the old underworld kingdom of the dead, they lead a grey existence, lacking both joy and sorrow.


Zoroaster was thus the first to teach the doctrines of an individual judgment, Heaven and Hell, the future resurrection of the body, the general Last Judgment, and life everlasting for the reunited soul and body. These doctrines were to become familiar articles of faith to much of mankind, through borrowings by Judaism, Christianity and Islam; yet it is in Zoroastrianism itself that they have their fullest logical coherence, since Zoroaster insisted both on the goodness of the material creation, and hence of the physical body, and on the unwavering impartiality of divine justice. According to him, - salvation for the individual depended on the sum of his thoughts, words and deeds, and there could be no intervention, whether compassionate or capricious, by any divine Being to alter this. With such a doctrine, belief in the Day of Judgment had its full awful significance, with each man having to bear the responsibility for the fate of his own soul, as well as sharing in responsibility for the fate of the world. Zoroaster's gospel was thus a noble and strenuous one, which called for both courage and resolution on the part of those willing to receive n.

In Biblical point of view this life is the first death.

That doesn't answer the question, it does avoid the entire topic. Yahweh taking a man to heaven is not a resurrection.

The fist that you know is not necessary the first that had the idea.

So then for about 8 centuries Yahweh didn't tell his followers about the big final battle. Then, the Persians occupy and happen to have a myth, but it's actually more correct than what Yahweh was telling his people. Then after the Persians leave the Israelites suddenly use all their stories, re-tooled for Judaism.

That is the most absurd tap-dance you are attempting to save face for these beliefs. And of course, as usual, you have no evidence.

This isn't "an idea", it a long list of supernatural events, attitudes, they completely change god, people's destiny, the Persians may not have been the first. But Israel definitely used their theology. Maybe they got it from some older religion. It's still all mythology.

Sorry, I don't think that is true.

Coming from someone who doesn't care at all about what is true, believes they know more than every field of scholarship, and yet can't show a shred of evidence, is completely meaningless to me. Why would you apologize? I am interested in what is true and clearly you are not. Unless you can provide evidence why would you even bother? It just shows how deep cognitive bias can go.


But here:
The ancient Israelites envisaged the universe as a flat disc-shaped Earth floating on water, heaven above, underworld below.[6] Humans inhabited Earth during life and the underworld after death; there was no way that mortals could enter heaven, and the underworld was morally neutral;[7][8] only in Hellenistic times (after c. 330 BCE) did Jews begin to adopt the Greek idea that it would be a place of punishment for misdeeds, and that the righteous would enjoy an afterlife in heaven.[8] In this period too the older three-level cosmology in large measure gave way to the Greek concept of a spherical Earth suspended in space at the center of a number of concentric heavens.[9]

1. Aune 2003, p. 119: "The archaic cosmology conceived of the world in terms of a three-tiered cosmos consisting of the earth as a flat disc in the middle, surrounded by the river Ocean (the Greek version) or floating on water (the Israelite version), with heaven above and the underworld beneath [...]"
2. Wright 2002, p. 53: "Biblical texts from all historical periods and a variety of literary genres demonstrate that in Yahwistic circles, that is, among people who worshipped Yahweh as the chief god, God was always understood as the one who alone created heaven, Earth, and all that is in them. [...] Yahweh, the Israelite god, had no rivals, and in a world where nations claimed that their gods were the supreme beings in the universe and that all others were subject to them, the Israelites' claim for the superiority of Yahweh enabled them to imagine that no other nation could rival her [...]. Phrases such as 'Yahweh, God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth' [...] and related phrases for Yahweh as creator and almighty master of the cosmos have parallels in earlier Canaanite terminology for the god El. [...] In fact, the Israelites did not create these phrases but inherited them from earlier Canaanite civilizations. Moreover, later editors of the Hebrew Bible used them to serve their particular monotheistic theology: their god is the supreme god, and he alone created the universe."

1. Aune 2003, p. 119: "During the Hellenistic period a geocentric model of the universe largely replaced the older three-tiered universe model, for Greek thinkers (such as Aristotle and Eratosthenes) proposed that the earth was a sphere suspended freely in space."

Lee, Sang Meyng (2010). The Cosmic Drama of Salvation. Mohr Siebeck


There are the 4 scholars who you know more than. So if you want you can write to them and tell them "sorry , I think you are wrong".
Meanwhile I see the evidence is far in their favor. All historians of this period say the same as well. At least any I have encountered reading or listening to.

I think the idea of righteous living eternally is for example in these:

Riches don't profit in the day of wrath, But righteousness delivers from death.
Prov. 11:4

Nothing about heaven.

The wicked is brought down in his calamity, But in death, the righteous has a refuge.
Prov. 14:32

What is the meaning of proverb 14 32?


When calamity comes, the wicked are brought down, but even in death the righteous seek refuge in God. This wise saying is about two common characters in Proverbs – “the wicked” and “the righteous.” The focus of this verse is the adversity of life for both.


Nothing about heaven, souls, a communal meal, savior deities

Therefore the wicked shall not stand in the judgment, Nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For Yahweh knows the way of the righteous, But the way of the wicked shall perish.
Ps. 1:5-6

And I believe those are much older than Greek ideas.

The "wicked" perishing goes back to the earliest mythology we know of. Nothing here is even close to Greek Hellenistic ideas.

First of all Proverbs is also partially copied and also overall very similar to other wisdom traditions.

"The third unit, 22:17–24:22, is headed "bend your ear and hear the words of the wise". A large part of this section is a recasting of a second-millennium BCE Egyptian work, the Instruction of Amenemope, and may have reached the Hebrew author(s) through an Aramaic translation."

The "wisdom" genre was widespread throughout the ancient Near East, and reading Proverbs alongside the examples recovered from Egypt and Mesopotamia reveals the common ground shared by international wisdom.

Book of Proverbs - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

So even Proverbs has copied parts.