Stealing Scripture?

For generations, scholars and historians agreed that the Old Testament was unique among Near East writings. Now the tendency is to claim the OT writers largely borrowed from other works and that they offered nothing new.

What changed? Well, nothing. The writings have all remained the same. The idea that much was “borrowed” is posited by some skeptics to infer “stolen.” Most readers are often disappointed that such tabloid-like claims don’t hold merit. Good for selling books, however.

In fact, it has never been a great mystery or surprise that one finds some similarities among cultures living and interacting with each other. No one has ever disputed this common sense. Many will play the “who came first” game, which is often a fallacy (i.e. just because something precedes something else doesn’t automatically mean one produced the other). After all, many could convincingly argue that Genesis is derived from sources that predate anything else by far.

So the arguments of the skeptics rest by great measure on ignoring the significant differences between the Bible and other texts. It does a great disservice to history and studies of antiquity to do so. Are all such claims driven by bias? Probably not, but when one puts one text next to another and can say with a straight face that they don’t have fundamental and critical differences, the observer must look at the motivations. To be fair, there are even some “religious” scholars who agree with their skeptical colleagues. How does one reconcile such apparently divergent views? With great difficulty and rationalization.

Scholar John N. Oswalt, in his book, The Bible Among the Myths, examines these issues at great length. He details that the Bible is radically different, in many ways, to its contemporaries. Many will dismiss or minimize the Bible because it doesn’t fit into their worldview. Regardless, it is certain that the Bible will remain an important part of the canon of ancient writings. The level of study and preservation of the text make this more true of it than of any work. These two things would be difficult to deny by anyone. However, as Oswalt argues, to simply leave it as nothing more that this, defies reason.