Unless the deity changes the law in the future, although that is not what happened.
The law is essentially the same today as it was when the Bible was written, although the punishment for homosexuality has changed.
You need evidence to demonstrate a deity did anything. That doesn't exist anywhere. The Bahai writings on science are beyond wrong, I reviewed them lately and there is no chance whatsoever a deity was informing this person. Unless the deity wanted to turn away people who understood science and philosophy. He also failed to give any wisdom, knowledge, science, math, future, medical science, anything that wasn't already known (and often wrong). The OT is not from a deity either.
Judaism - Myths
Myths
Biblical
myths are found mainly in the first 11 chapters of
Genesis, the first book of the
Bible. They are concerned with the
creation of the world and the first man and woman, the origin of the current human condition, the primeval
Deluge, the distribution of peoples, and the variation of languages.
The basic stories are derived from the popular lore of the
ancient Middle East; parallels can be found in the
extant literature of the peoples of the area. The
Mesopotamians, for instance, also knew of an earthly paradise such as
Eden, and the figure of the
cherubim—properly
griffins rather than angels—was known to the
Canaanites. In the Bible, however, this mythical garden of the gods becomes the scene of man’s
fall and the background of a story designed to account for the natural limitations of human life. Similarly, the
Babylonians told of the formation of humankind from clay. But, whereas in the pagan tale the first man’s function is to serve as an earthly
menial of the gods, in the scriptural version his role is to rule over all other creatures. The story of the
Deluge, including the elements of the
ark and the dispatch of the raven and dove, appears already in the Babylonian myths of
Gilgamesh and
Atrahasis. There, however, the hero is eventually made immortal, whereas in the Bible this detail is omitted because, to the
Israelite mind, no child of woman could achieve that status. Lastly, while the story of the
Tower of Babel was told originally to account for the stepped temples (
ziggurats) of
Babylonia, to the
Hebrew writer its purpose is simply to inculcate the
moral lesson that humans should not aspire beyond their assigned station.
Scattered through
the Prophets and Holy
Writings (the two latter portions of the Hebrew Bible) are
allusions to other ancient myths—e.g., to that of a
primordial combat between
YHWH and a monster variously named
Leviathan (Wriggly), Rahab (Braggart), or simply Sir Sea or Dragon. The Babylonians told likewise of a fight between their god
Marduk and the monster Tiamat; the
Hittites told of a battle between the weather god and the dragon Illuyankas; while a Canaanite poem from Ras Shamra (ancient
Ugarit) in northern Syria relates the discomfiture of Sir Sea by the deity
Baal and the rout of an opponent named Leviathan. Originally, this
myth probably referred to the annual subjugation of the floods.
Legends and other tales
Legends in the
Hebrew Scriptures often embellish the accounts of national heroes with standard motifs drawn from popular lore. Thus, the Genesis story of
Joseph and Potiphar’s wife recurs substantially (but with other characters) in an Egyptian papyrus of the 13th century BCE. The account of the infant
Moses being placed in the bulrushes (in Exodus) has an earlier counterpart in a Babylonian tale about
Sargon, king of
Akkad (
c. 2334–
c. 2279 BCE), and is paralleled later in legends associated with the Persian Cyrus and with Tu-Küeh, the fabled founder of the Turkish nation.
Jephthah’s rash vow (in
Judges), whereby he is committed to
sacrifice his daughter, recalls the Classical
legend of
Idomeneus of Crete, who was similarly compelled to slay his own son. The motif of the letter whereby
David engineers the death in battle of
Bathsheba’s husband recurs in
Homer’s story of Bellerophon. The celebrated judgment of
Solomon concerning the child claimed by two contending women is told,
albeit with variations of detail, about
Buddha,
Confucius, and other sages; the story of how
Jonah was swallowed by a “great fish” but was subsequently disgorged intact finds a parallel in the Indian tale of the hero Shaktideva, who endured the same experience during his quest for the Golden City. On the other hand, it should be observed that many of the parallels commonly cited from the folklore of
indigenous peoples may be mere repetitions of biblical material picked up from Christian missionaries.
The Hebrew Bible also contains a few examples of
fables (didactic tales in which animals or plants play human roles). Thus, the serpent in
Eden talks to
Eve, and
Balaam’s *** not only speaks but also seeks to avoid an
angel, unseen by Balaam, that is blocking the road, while trees compete for kingship in the celebrated
parable of Jotham in Judges. Finally, in the
Book of Job (38:31) there are allusions to star myths concerning the binding of
Orion (called “the Fool”) and the “chaining” of the
Pleiades.
Contemporary interpretations
The tendency to interpret biblical tales and legends as authentic historical records or as
allegories or as the relics of solar, lunar, and astral myths is now a thing of the past.
