The Bible as early postmodern fiction

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The Bible, of course is not all that typical of "holy books".- some have a lot less hisory, a lot less variety. The Vedas, for example, are apparently hymns and liturgy - we have the psalms, but no liturgy included in the canon. Some have a single human prophet as author.

Except for special cases like the Book of Mormon, Science and Health, or the Bahai writings, sacred books are usually transcriptions of sacred orally transmitted texts, and are variously edited in the writing on top of any modifications in the oral process.

I've just been reading about "Biblical Minimalism", the "Copenhagen School", Philip Davies' "In Search of Ancient Israel", ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_R._Davies ), "The Myth of Israel" by Thomas L Thompson, "The Bible Unearthed" etc.

The theory, apparently increasingly widely accepted, is that the main body of the Old Testament, ( from Genesis through to the end of the fictional Solomon era ) was dreamed up, written and compiled only a few hundred years before the Gospels, at the height of the Persian Empire or even later, ( thus subject to Hellenist/Classical Greek influences, like the Odyssey or the Illiad, as well as Plato's theories of Essences etc ) that it was perhaps a sort of manifesto or motivational tool for a group of disaffected exiles/refugees, mainly intellectuals, the result of Persia's massive movements of people etc, and/or a recruitment or "control"/management tool for the small struggling city-state of Judah; the story of a glorious past, of a once unified kingdom lost, of a "special people"/ethnic group picked out for success, of great kings/heroes and inspired prophets, ( easy to be prophetic in retrospect :lol ) etc ... none of which actually ever existed! ... ( something which does make contemporary Israel's claim to their right to a jewish-sectarian-Israel seem rather tenuous ... ).

I must admit that although I already understood that a lot of the OT, especially Genesis, was myth, ( however deeply informed by real lived human experience, of the origins of language, the Neolithic Revolution and the invention of writing, among other things ), I hadn't realised just how recently it had all been written and conceived. I had imagined that even if a lot of it had only been written down in the last 1000-600 years BCE the bulk of it had surely already existed for millenia in the form of oral tradition. And although it is probable that chunks of the oldest myth *were* based on ancient legends most of the first five books, ( from the slavery in Egypt onwards ), about the Exodus, the years in the wilderness etc are all relatively "modern" creations, dreamed up by a group of people living not so much longer ago than the Romans, and even the oldest stuff, the creation myth etc, is very likely a relatively modern version, affected by Greek philosophy, hence why it IS so different to most other creation myths ...

One of the weirdest aspects of this is realising that people back then made things up in almost exactly the same way as now ... and how many people have the tendency to believe in the concrete historical nature of such inventions/fabrications ... .... ... ie. just how powerful, almost inevitable, the "slide" of myth towards history, the mistaking of fiction for non-fiction, of language ( the special effects which are words ), for the "real thing", ( of "the map" for the "territory" generally ), seems to be. I am reminded of the TV news channel recently mistaking a screenshot/video clip ( ? ) from a first person shooter in a military environment video game for footage/photography from a real battlefield. ... Perhaps in a thousand years people will completely confuse the two ...

... In other words it is still possible that although the Old Testament was conceived, imagined and written down only a few hundred years before the Gospels but often pretends to be the work of/honest reporting by people writing a lot lot earlier ... this was *NOT* an attempt at deception or manipulation, neither an attempt to convert others to judaism, ( though apparently it did have this effect within a few hundred years, the tens of thousands of people converting to Judaism actually alarmed the Romans ) nor a sad/pathetic "Gone with the Wind" sort of daydreaming, etc BUT as Awesomelyglorious suggested, a careful precise and brilliant bestselling work exploring and attempting to debunk some of the most confining/oppressive belief systems of the day ... intended as the very darkest satire!! ! :lol

Or perhaps it was a sort of "antique" pencil and paper/ink and papyrus/parchment sword and scorcery roleplay/virtual reality game, an ancient equivalent of present day video games, played by a couple of dozen educated intellectuals writing down in meticulous detail the imaginary history of their chosen character, etc. :lol
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Well, some books that were excluded from the OT as "apocrpyhal" seem to have more in common with Christianity than Judaism.

I take it this thread is a way for atheists to talk about something to which they denie so why talk about it?

How can something 3000 years old be -post modern-?

ruveyn