It's strange how the rather pedestrian story of a man who journey from Mesopotamia to Turkey to Palestine, had a few kids, kept sheep and believed in one God instead of many should be a myth. And on the other hand a Cathagian general took an army and elephants and invaded Rome itself, is real.
Genesis is known to be a myth. Based on many lines of evidence. This is not disputed among historical scholars?
"Tradition credits
Moses as the
author of Genesis, as well as the books of
Exodus,
Leviticus,
Numbers and most of
Deuteronomy; however, modern scholars, especially from the 19th century onward, place the books' authorship in the 6th and 5th centuries BC, hundreds of years after Moses is supposed to have lived.
[3][4] Based on scientific interpretation of
archaeological,
genetic, and linguistic evidence, most scholars consider Genesis to be primarily
mythological rather than
historical."
So yes, a character who just happens to be the central figure in a. new forming religious movement is a literary creation. That is actually a very common model. It happened in the 1900's with the Cargo Cults. When the U.S. returned to the islands they had created a fictive creator who lived way before and was the first to recieve revelations.
You can do your own research on Hannibal and see he is not JUST a character in a religious myth but is witnessed by many people including historians Pliny and Plutarch. Many other writers wrote about him as well. He visited many lands and is attested by people in every land he went. Abraham is in one story confirmed to be a myth. You can figure this out yourself.
Also he was a general. We KNOW FOR A FACT that generals were very real and the
Carthaginian army was excellent. So they had to have had someone doing the strategy and executing battles. Even if he was a creation, someone did win battles. Creating a fake general (who like 20 different nations attest to seeing in person). is pointless?
Also, Egypt has a "one true God" religion. Yahweh wasn't the first. Early Israelites definitely worshipped Ashera as Yahwehs consort. Yet Abraham doesn't know. He only knows about the later theology from around the 6th century where they dropped Ashera and focused on Yahweh because they thought the invasions were them doing something wrong. It explains this in scripture.
What's the difference? Because there's a lot at stake if the bible is true.
Pascals Wager. It's 100% myth. You can say the same about Islam, except way worse. "a painful doom" is on almost every page multiple times. Non-believers get this in spades.
Yet you are not even phased at all? Maybe because you know it's not real. But how exactly do you know your version is real? You grew up in it? Were converted? Decided to just believe and now it's just true? None of those are any different than the billions in Islam. Cognative bias does not equate to evidence.
People thought the OT was true because of the authoratative way Yahweh is spoken about (and Rome made it law and they forced it on Europe and so on). Historians now know that is the same for all deities going all the way back to the first in Sumer.
