The following is a guest post by OpenDiary blogger Atheist Under Ur Bed. This is part of an ongoing series that will be posted each Monday. You can read the introduction to this series by clicking here.

Hi! Welcome to yet another session of Monday School.

And YES – we’re still billing ourselves as “A Rational Corrective To All That Nonsense You Learned Yesterday!” If that ever changes, we’ll be sure to let you know.

The Bible is constantly presented as a unique and original work. Many even go so far as to claim that it could only have been written with the inspiration of God.

It is difficult to see why we should accept either of these claims.

Let’s begin our examination of the issue with a look at the Old Testament.

Consider:

1. The Creation

Many seem to believe that the creation story which opens Genesis is unique and unprecedented. In point of fact, many cultures all over the world include myths about the creation of the cosmos by an omnipotent sky god. Why should we believe the Bible’s account over all others?

And lest you think that the existence of all these similar myths somehow proves that they vary only in details while containing an incontrovertible common core of truth, consider this: They are merely one type of creation myth. Among the others: Creation through a cosmic seed or womb; creation by a set of cosmic parents, such as a sky father and earth mother; creation from a cosmic egg; and creation involving an earth diver – a primitive animal which dives beneath primordial waters and brings the earth back with it.

There is no good reason to believe that Genesis is anything other than a myth on a par with the creation myths of many other ancient cultures. There is no good reason to prefer the Bible’s version of creation over the versions put forth by other ancient peoples besides the Hebrews.

Since Genesis seems to borrow much of its account of creation from Babylonian mythology, it would seem that those who are most impressed by this particular myth would do well to reject the Bible as an inferior, second-hand source and instead embrace ancient Babylonian religions as being closest to God.

2. The Flood

Many ancient cultures contain myths concerning a “world-wide” flood. They vary in time and place, and their claims of universality are not backed up by modern geological evidence. It’s easy to understand why: Each ancient culture’s “world” was a much smaller place than the world we know today after centuries of global explorations, the development of satellite photography, etc.

The Bible’s particular account of the Flood appears to borrow heavily from the far older Babylonian Gilgamesh epic. Thus, it is not merely a case of its authors “reinventing the wheel” but of their apparently stealing the wheel outright from another culture. If one simply must believe in any Flood myth at all, it is hard to justify believing in the Bible’s rather than the older Babylonian one it seems to be derived from.

3. Jacob’s Ladder

The Bible’s story of Jacob’s ladder sounds suspiciously like an earlier Egyptian description of Osiris and his ladder to heaven.

4. Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife

The story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife in Genesis 39 essentially retells an Egyptian tale that was written down in the 13th century B.C.

5. Moses

The Exodus story about how the infant Moses was put in a basket made of bulrushes, set in a river, and eventually discovered by others unaware of his actual origins is a story told much earlier by the Babylonians about Sargon, King of Akkad.

6. The Ten Commandments

The Bible’s Ten Commandments seem to derive from Egypt’s Osirian Requirements and Hammurabi’s Law.

7. “An Eye For An Eye”

The Old Testament’s famous “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth” approach to justice seems to derive from Hammarubi’s Law, too.

8. Jephthah’s Rash Vow

The tale of Jephthah’s rash vow found in Judges 11:30-40 echoes a legend told about Idomeneus of Crete.

9. Esther

The Book of Esther “is basically the Judaized version of a Persian novella about the shrewdness of harem queens” according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.

10. Job

The Book of Job’s tale of a good man being afflicted with trouble has an exact parallel in a Babylonian legend that’s 1000 years older.

Again and again, the authors of the Bible seem less likely to have been divinely inspired holy men than simple plagiarists.