Well argued and written. The Bible is a book that should be read and re-read ti children time and again so as to ensure that people never forget its lessons.
The old testament helped forge France, Germany, Italy and all other nations of Europe for a reason.
Neither am I a child who needs any form of invisible friend to comfort or guide me.
However, I have read the Torah, the remainder of the Bible - “The Book”, as your Unlettered Messenger referred to it - it is what The Bible means in Greek and Latin. I have also read the Qur'an. I particularly like Aya 15 of the Sura Mohammad.
Zephaniah was one of “The People of The Book” whom your Unlettered Messenger respected. Do you know what the verses I mentioned earlier say? If not, why not enlighten yourself? Or, are you scared of words in a book.
The idea that truth does not endure because it is perfect, but because it is honest, feels like something we often forget. We live in a time that prizes polished certainty, fast conclusions, and flawless images. Here instead we meet a much older and more human way of remembering: not as monument, but as responsibility.
What moved me most is the reminder that what survives is not what shines, but what refuses to lie, even when it reveals weakness, failure, and wound. It is a call to simplicity, to transparency, to not being afraid of seeing the human as it really is.
Perhaps that is why some stories never stop breathing: they recognize us long before we recognize them.
Thank you for this thoughtful and generous reflection.
“The Daughter of Time: A Rebuttal on History and Sacred Memory.”
The stories in the Hebrew Bible did not arise in isolation. They were drawn from folk traditions, oral histories, and Near Eastern myths that long predated Israel’s scribes. Civilizations such as Sumer, Akkad, Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, and Canaan told similar tales of creation, divine judgment, kingship, and cosmic order. Over centuries, Hebrew writers re-interpreted these older materials into a distinctly monotheistic and moral theology—one that centered the covenant between a single God and a chosen people. What emerged was neither pure myth nor detached history, but a woven memory designed to preserve identity and faith through catastrophe.
1. Creation and the Cosmic Order
The opening of Genesis reflects motifs from the Babylonian Enuma Elish, in which a god defeats the sea-monster of chaos to create the world. Likewise, Genesis begins with God taming “the deep” (tehom), echoing that same cosmic struggle. Yet where the Mesopotamian myth celebrates divine combat, the Hebrew version transforms it into creation through speech, turning violence into order and purpose. This reinterpretation marks the theological leap: the universe is not born from divine rivalry but from moral intention.
From a modern perspective, this shift shows how Israel’s writers used familiar mythic structure to articulate new ethical meaning. You frame this as an act of “truth refusing to lie,” but history suggests it was an act of reinterpretation—reshaping shared myth to proclaim a moral cosmos under one God.
2. The Flood and Human Accountability
The flood story of Noah draws directly from older Mesopotamian epics such as Atra-Hasis and the Epic of Gilgamesh, where gods send a deluge to silence noisy humanity. The Hebrew retelling keeps the structure—divine warning, an ark, the birds, the mountain—but transforms the motive: sin, not annoyance, provokes judgment. The flood becomes moral trial, not cosmic inconvenience.
Modern scholarship shows that Israel’s version likely combined several oral strands and later priestly editing. Over time, this narrative evolved from myth to ethical allegory, teaching that moral corruption, not divine whim, endangers creation. Its endurance owes as much to editorial refinement as to timeless truth.
3. Patriarchs and Covenant
Figures like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob do not appear in earlier myths directly, but the covenantal idea—gods choosing and protecting a people—was common in Near Eastern treaties and royal inscriptions. The Hebrew writers turned that political convention into a spiritual relationship: one God binding Himself to one family. These stories likely arose from tribal memories later framed in theological terms.
In modern reflection, your argument that they “refused to lie” underplays how memory functions in nation-building. These patriarchal tales survive not for their literal precision, but because they sanctify kinship and moral law within historical experience.
4. Exodus and Deliverance
The Exodus blends folk memory and mythic structure. Egyptian records mention foreign workers (the Apiru) and periodic expulsions, providing a historical seed. Yet the plagues and the sea’s division carry mythic resonance from Canaanite tales of the storm-god’s victory over the sea (Yam). Hebrew poets re-imagined this into divine liberation—history turned liturgy.
Over centuries, the Exodus grew into the defining moral narrative of freedom through faith. Later retellings (in Psalms, Deuteronomy, prophetic writings) re-interpreted it again, aligning theology with national destiny. What began as localized deliverance became a cosmic moral drama—a transformation far more literary and theological than purely factual.
5. Kings, Prophets, and the Rise and Fall of Nations
Royal inscriptions across Mesopotamia always celebrated triumph. Israel’s historians adopted the same record-keeping habit but inverted its tone: they recorded failure as divine indictment. Yet the books of Kings and Chronicles were compiled and edited centuries later, likely during or after the Babylonian exile. Those editors—priests and scribes—wrote with the power of survival. They selected, shaped, and moralized history to explain defeat and to justify renewed covenantal loyalty.
Thus, the Bible, like other ancient histories, was ultimately written by the keepers of memory—those who endured long enough to define what endurance meant. You contrast Israel’s humility with empires’ propaganda, but both reflect selective remembrance. The difference lies in the theology of loss, not in the absence of bias.
6. Wisdom, Poetry, and the Human Voice
Books like Job, Psalms, and Proverbs incorporate motifs known from Egyptian and Mesopotamian wisdom texts—debates on justice, divine silence, and moral conduct. Israel’s authors turned these into dialogues between humanity and God rather than between mortals alone. Their originality lay in giving suffering a sacred dimension.
Modern readers see in these works a psychological and ethical sophistication, but their form—proverb, lament, hymn—is ancient. They remind us that Hebrew literature absorbed the wisdom of its neighbors and re-forged it into theology, proving again that endurance is not purity but adaptation.
Perspective and Power
You argue that these stories survived because they “refused to lie.” A closer look suggests they survived because they evolved—absorbing myth, loss, and reinterpretation across centuries. The final editors of the Hebrew Bible were not detached witnesses; they were survivors who shaped national conscience after catastrophe. In that sense, they were the “winners” of cultural memory, crafting the enduring narrative that would define Western religion.
Your reading, though eloquent, remains modern: a defense of truth in an age wary of belief. Ancient scribes wrote not to oppose skepticism, but to anchor their community in meaning when empires erased nations. You view their endurance as moral purity; history shows it as the art of continual reinvention.
In conclusion:
The Hebrew Bible stands as a mosaic of Near Eastern myth, folk tradition, and theological innovation. Creation, flood, exodus, covenant, and prophecy each carry echoes of older civilizations—Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Canaanite—yet transformed those echoes into a single moral vision: that history itself is accountable to God. Over centuries, redactors revised and reframed these stories to meet new crises, ensuring survival through adaptation.
So when you say these stories “refused to lie,” the deeper truth is that they refused to disappear. Their power lies not in untouched accuracy but in their capacity to remake inherited myths into moral memory. And while you write from the vantage of modern conscience, those ancient storytellers wrote from the urgency of survival—turning myth into meaning and memory into faith.
A wonderful article which tells us why we must keep our statues and memorabilia lest we forget who we are and where we came from. Of course many wonderful building and works of art were created after the New Testament became common knowledge. Cathedrals were inspired by the story of the Christ, and the new Covenant with God, which emphasised peace and love of neighbours, not war. The New testament was the new contract with God. If we choose, we can all be chosen now.
Well argued and written. The Bible is a book that should be read and re-read ti children time and again so as to ensure that people never forget its lessons.
The old testament helped forge France, Germany, Italy and all other nations of Europe for a reason.
I follow you on X and enjoy your posts.
This post is excellent!
As a Christian who studies the Bible daily, I thought your post was accurate, well balanced, and written to speak to a very broad audience.
Thank You.
Thank you. Appreciate your kind comments.
Zephaniah 2:4-7 is particularly relevant atm.😉
Pipe down you Jewish heathen. May you be damned to Hell.
Firstly, I’m not Jewish.
Neither am I a child who needs any form of invisible friend to comfort or guide me.
However, I have read the Torah, the remainder of the Bible - “The Book”, as your Unlettered Messenger referred to it - it is what The Bible means in Greek and Latin. I have also read the Qur'an. I particularly like Aya 15 of the Sura Mohammad.
Zephaniah was one of “The People of The Book” whom your Unlettered Messenger respected. Do you know what the verses I mentioned earlier say? If not, why not enlighten yourself? Or, are you scared of words in a book.
A classic article. "The past is not silent. Sometimes it waits for us to catch up." Thank you.
This piece struck me deeply.
The idea that truth does not endure because it is perfect, but because it is honest, feels like something we often forget. We live in a time that prizes polished certainty, fast conclusions, and flawless images. Here instead we meet a much older and more human way of remembering: not as monument, but as responsibility.
What moved me most is the reminder that what survives is not what shines, but what refuses to lie, even when it reveals weakness, failure, and wound. It is a call to simplicity, to transparency, to not being afraid of seeing the human as it really is.
Perhaps that is why some stories never stop breathing: they recognize us long before we recognize them.
Thank you for this thoughtful and generous reflection.
Beautifully summarized. Thank you.
This was an excellent article. Shame the political faggots had to come in and dung everything up.
“The Daughter of Time: A Rebuttal on History and Sacred Memory.”
The stories in the Hebrew Bible did not arise in isolation. They were drawn from folk traditions, oral histories, and Near Eastern myths that long predated Israel’s scribes. Civilizations such as Sumer, Akkad, Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, and Canaan told similar tales of creation, divine judgment, kingship, and cosmic order. Over centuries, Hebrew writers re-interpreted these older materials into a distinctly monotheistic and moral theology—one that centered the covenant between a single God and a chosen people. What emerged was neither pure myth nor detached history, but a woven memory designed to preserve identity and faith through catastrophe.
1. Creation and the Cosmic Order
The opening of Genesis reflects motifs from the Babylonian Enuma Elish, in which a god defeats the sea-monster of chaos to create the world. Likewise, Genesis begins with God taming “the deep” (tehom), echoing that same cosmic struggle. Yet where the Mesopotamian myth celebrates divine combat, the Hebrew version transforms it into creation through speech, turning violence into order and purpose. This reinterpretation marks the theological leap: the universe is not born from divine rivalry but from moral intention.
From a modern perspective, this shift shows how Israel’s writers used familiar mythic structure to articulate new ethical meaning. You frame this as an act of “truth refusing to lie,” but history suggests it was an act of reinterpretation—reshaping shared myth to proclaim a moral cosmos under one God.
2. The Flood and Human Accountability
The flood story of Noah draws directly from older Mesopotamian epics such as Atra-Hasis and the Epic of Gilgamesh, where gods send a deluge to silence noisy humanity. The Hebrew retelling keeps the structure—divine warning, an ark, the birds, the mountain—but transforms the motive: sin, not annoyance, provokes judgment. The flood becomes moral trial, not cosmic inconvenience.
Modern scholarship shows that Israel’s version likely combined several oral strands and later priestly editing. Over time, this narrative evolved from myth to ethical allegory, teaching that moral corruption, not divine whim, endangers creation. Its endurance owes as much to editorial refinement as to timeless truth.
3. Patriarchs and Covenant
Figures like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob do not appear in earlier myths directly, but the covenantal idea—gods choosing and protecting a people—was common in Near Eastern treaties and royal inscriptions. The Hebrew writers turned that political convention into a spiritual relationship: one God binding Himself to one family. These stories likely arose from tribal memories later framed in theological terms.
In modern reflection, your argument that they “refused to lie” underplays how memory functions in nation-building. These patriarchal tales survive not for their literal precision, but because they sanctify kinship and moral law within historical experience.
4. Exodus and Deliverance
The Exodus blends folk memory and mythic structure. Egyptian records mention foreign workers (the Apiru) and periodic expulsions, providing a historical seed. Yet the plagues and the sea’s division carry mythic resonance from Canaanite tales of the storm-god’s victory over the sea (Yam). Hebrew poets re-imagined this into divine liberation—history turned liturgy.
Over centuries, the Exodus grew into the defining moral narrative of freedom through faith. Later retellings (in Psalms, Deuteronomy, prophetic writings) re-interpreted it again, aligning theology with national destiny. What began as localized deliverance became a cosmic moral drama—a transformation far more literary and theological than purely factual.
5. Kings, Prophets, and the Rise and Fall of Nations
Royal inscriptions across Mesopotamia always celebrated triumph. Israel’s historians adopted the same record-keeping habit but inverted its tone: they recorded failure as divine indictment. Yet the books of Kings and Chronicles were compiled and edited centuries later, likely during or after the Babylonian exile. Those editors—priests and scribes—wrote with the power of survival. They selected, shaped, and moralized history to explain defeat and to justify renewed covenantal loyalty.
Thus, the Bible, like other ancient histories, was ultimately written by the keepers of memory—those who endured long enough to define what endurance meant. You contrast Israel’s humility with empires’ propaganda, but both reflect selective remembrance. The difference lies in the theology of loss, not in the absence of bias.
6. Wisdom, Poetry, and the Human Voice
Books like Job, Psalms, and Proverbs incorporate motifs known from Egyptian and Mesopotamian wisdom texts—debates on justice, divine silence, and moral conduct. Israel’s authors turned these into dialogues between humanity and God rather than between mortals alone. Their originality lay in giving suffering a sacred dimension.
Modern readers see in these works a psychological and ethical sophistication, but their form—proverb, lament, hymn—is ancient. They remind us that Hebrew literature absorbed the wisdom of its neighbors and re-forged it into theology, proving again that endurance is not purity but adaptation.
Perspective and Power
You argue that these stories survived because they “refused to lie.” A closer look suggests they survived because they evolved—absorbing myth, loss, and reinterpretation across centuries. The final editors of the Hebrew Bible were not detached witnesses; they were survivors who shaped national conscience after catastrophe. In that sense, they were the “winners” of cultural memory, crafting the enduring narrative that would define Western religion.
Your reading, though eloquent, remains modern: a defense of truth in an age wary of belief. Ancient scribes wrote not to oppose skepticism, but to anchor their community in meaning when empires erased nations. You view their endurance as moral purity; history shows it as the art of continual reinvention.
In conclusion:
The Hebrew Bible stands as a mosaic of Near Eastern myth, folk tradition, and theological innovation. Creation, flood, exodus, covenant, and prophecy each carry echoes of older civilizations—Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Canaanite—yet transformed those echoes into a single moral vision: that history itself is accountable to God. Over centuries, redactors revised and reframed these stories to meet new crises, ensuring survival through adaptation.
So when you say these stories “refused to lie,” the deeper truth is that they refused to disappear. Their power lies not in untouched accuracy but in their capacity to remake inherited myths into moral memory. And while you write from the vantage of modern conscience, those ancient storytellers wrote from the urgency of survival—turning myth into meaning and memory into faith.
Belief is myth itself, yet truth conquers all
~d
An interesting viewpoint. Will give it some thought. Thanks for speaking out your reflections.
A wonderful article which tells us why we must keep our statues and memorabilia lest we forget who we are and where we came from. Of course many wonderful building and works of art were created after the New Testament became common knowledge. Cathedrals were inspired by the story of the Christ, and the new Covenant with God, which emphasised peace and love of neighbours, not war. The New testament was the new contract with God. If we choose, we can all be chosen now.
What a great reminder to have some courage, serve humanity and truth: free Palestine! Hopefully, as every evil, fascist Israel will fall! 🇵🇸✊
It is better not to link the actions of a few with the actions of a nation or a people.
You can read an Israeli magazine if you don’t believe this https://www.genocidewatch.com/single-post/poll-show-most-jewish-israelis-support-expelling-gazans
Shoo, woman. Go do as the Bible says and be a quiet housewife instead of a political harlot.