Planted Assumptions

One of my daughters made an interesting observation the other day: she had been reading Gilgamesh, and commentaries about it. One commentary suggested that the Biblical tale of creation and the flood had been adapted from the stories in Gilgamesh. And Katy noted that this assumes that Gilgamesh has precedence over the Bible.

Now, I'll grant that the earliest recorded copies of Gilgamesh predate the earliest recorded copies of the Bible. Does this necessarily mean that the Bible is derivative of Gilgamesh? I would submit that we cannot reach that conclusion definitively: there may have been oral traditions among the ancestors of the Hebrews that predate Gilgamesh. So, it would seem to be something of a leap to believe that the Bible derives from some other writings.

There is a further planted assumption here, and it is this: that the stories are myths. It can make some sense to study how a myth changes over time and from culture to culture, assuming that one can establish reliably which version is the "original". And one can certainly argue that Group B took the story from Group A and made the following changes.

What, though, if the stories are not myth, but history? Would it be astonishing that the stories bear a close resemblance one to another? Can we reasonably infer, from the near-universality of traditions about a worldwide flood that, perhaps, there was a --- worldwide flood?

Here's the point: those who teach that Biblical stories derive from the traditions of other religions are operating on the belief that the stories are not true. Whereas those who accept Genesis at face value are operating on the belief that the stories are true.

Both are statements of faith. Yet one view is treated as "scientific" and the other as, well, not scientific anyway.