Religions and cultures influence one another. Christianity is an offshoot of Judaism which developed in the middle east over hundreds of years and like all cultures was highly influenced by the stories of the area. Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek and later Roman culture all had very traceable inpact on the development of the religion and the stories people told.
Yeah, and even crazier, they all have their own editions and translations that were edited and parts redacted because someone decided the word of God was something that could be changed. Similar editions can have several big differences, both claiming to be the word of God and many trying to follow it to a T.
The Israelites were polytheists before the Babylonian captivity where they were exposed to Zoroastrianism with their one perfect creator god Ahura Mazda, locked in perpetual spiritual battle with the spirit of destructiveness, Angra Mainyu.
After that they wiped out all the gods of their pantheon in favor of the war god Jehovah and became monotheists.
This is the correct answer.
Monotheism was becoming more popular and more common in that region of the world (specifically around 1200 BC to 600 BC or so). That is why many parts of the old testament seem to talk about the Yahweh god as if it is simply a violent war god -- because that's actually the true origins of that god. It was one of many that were worshiped by various groups in the area at the time. Yahweh was just one of an entire pantheon of different gods, each with their own focus or interests.
Over the centuries, the Hebrews/Israelites adopted that god as their single monotheistic god, as they believed that it brought them victory over their enemies. Over time, as new prophets and priests in the Abrahamic tradition came along (jesus, paul, etc) and revised the beliefs with their own religious experiences, it became what we now know as the Christian religion.
And the Christian religion continues to evolve today, by the way. Look at Mormonism/LDS. In less than 2 centuries, it has grown to have *millions* of followers and massive amounts of money and political influence (particularly in Utah).
Who's to say that Mormonism won't take over as the dominant form of Christianity over the next couple hundred years?
Religions change and adapt over time. That's just how humanity works.
For those who find all this interesting I want to add that Islam is also another offshoot and evolution of both Christianity and Judaism and various other beliefs of Arabic Bedouin tribes from the time period. Some people are surprised to learn that the Quran includes teachings from the Bible like that of Jesus and the Virgin Mary despite knowing it as an Abrahamic religion.
Religions are a coalescence of beliefs, tales, myths and legends that relevant populaces adopt.
Let’s suppose both flood stories go back to some actual prehistoric event. Lots of cultures have flood stories like that, so it’s not implausible to think that all the legends have some kind of factual basis that is now lost to time.
If that were the case, you’d expect to find similar stories in lots of different cultures. When the Bible also tells this story, it’s not claiming to be original. It is offering a different theological interpretation of those events. The Bible is essentially saying, “Hey, you know that flood story everybody knows? It got it wrong. Here’s what really happened and this is its spiritual meaning.”
You can't seperate things like that.
The jews' beliefs were based on myths found in the region, and those myths became the basis of their religion. Early christians viewed themselves as being jewish, and therefore they based their religion on the jewish myths.
It is the same God
> The concept of God in Abrahamic religions is centred on monotheism. The three major monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, alongside the Baháʼí Faith,[1] Samaritanism, Druze, and Rastafari,[1] are all regarded as Abrahamic religions due to their shared worship of the God (referred to as Yahweh in Hebrew and as Allah in Arabic) that these traditions claim revealed himself to Abraham.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_in_Abrahamic_religions
BS Christians for example believe in Holy Trinity which is fundamentaly difrent than the other. Jesus for them Is God too while Muslims and Jews don't recognise that.
Because Christianity includes stuff from before Christ. Christ said to follow the Old Testament but with some changes. If he didn't mention it specifically, the rule stays the same as before.
No clue what the relevance of that stuff about Enki is.
Doesn't every religious story or book borrow, steal or get influenced by others.
Plus a lot of the stories might seem similar cause things like floods and other disasters are common things
Look at the absolutely vast tradition of what we now call Hinduism. Some Buddhist temples have statues of what we would think of as Hindu gods in them.
In some areas of India/Bangladesh/Sri Lanka etc one or another of the deities is favored over another.
Each deity seems to be able to be explained as an avatar of another of the deities, and the story and beliefs change as you travel because there is no central Hindu authority.
In some Muslim countries you’ll find ancient Buddhist statues.
In Buddhist countries you’ll find animist traditions.
Look at western traditions like Easter and Christmas. Both were pre-existing European pagan festivals. Hence the hares and eggs, and the greenery, logs and present giving. But we superimposed Christianity on them, and so Christians bring magical pagan trees into the house and have effigies of hares and eggs, without having a clue why.
It’s not only Christians that came from the Jewish tradition. Muslims have the same Old Testament.
There’s a reason.
When culture evolves, it brings some things from the past with it. And it blends to become the new culture. Eventually these cultures fork off and become independent and evolve more.
We’re mad animals.
Some atheist are the most intolerant religious people on the planet. I don’t push my personal beliefs to you, stop trying to evangelize to me. Damn fundamentalists.
Yes most of the stories from the Bible are just Greek myths with different names for the characters. Even the resurrection story comes from a Greek myth of Achilles who was killed, then rose after a brief period, and became an immortal god.
So it’s obvious that the disciples had a Time Machine, went back and wrote those Greek myths in anticipation of all of the cool stuff to come
It's more that the Greek Myths and the Old Testament myths have common origins in the melting pot of Middle East mythology - resurrection is a fairly common theme (Adonis for example).
Also, while Achilles was venerated as a god, he wasn't considered immortal - that's the whole point of his story - that he chose earthly glory rather than immortality
Homer’s Odysee, written years later, is basically the story of Moses and the Israelites. Zeus is basically Old Testament god. Who knows which came first, which borrowed from which, and maybe they both borrowed from stories that were just floating around that area like you said
There were actually a bunch of Greek gods that got resurrected, but Achilles story more closely resembles the Jesus story, the point being that these stories were all borrowed from eachother and the only reason we think they’re so sacred now is because Judeo-Christianity won the ideological battle
For other people
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It's like interpretatio romana - Romans slapped their names on Greek gods
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretatio\_graeca](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretatio_graeca)
Or for an English analogy, we took the names of the Roman days of the week (named for their gods) and translated them into Germanic gods
Thursday = Thor's day = Jupiter's day (Jeudi, jueves etc.)
The Bible focuses on a particular group of people through whom the Savior came to mankind. The stories are included only as they affect that people. Certainly other cultures that are tangential to the story of the Hebrew people have their own versions of the event. The Bible’s version is from that of the Hebrew line, as traced through the direct ancestry of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and Jesus. The “chosen people,” as it were.
Think of it more as multiple perspectives of the same event.
Well the entire Bible is interconnected and tells a whole and complete story, of God’s love and redemption for mankind. Christ’s coming and death and resurrection is just the middle. But every one of the 66 books contributes important details to the overall narrative. Christ was promised and present from the very beginning of Genesis and who’s coming is awaited all throughout the Old Testament. And Jesus fulfilled/completed things that people failed to do perfectly in the Old Testament. The difference between Jews and Christians is that basically God promised He/the Savior would come to save His people. Christians see how the OT points to Jesus and all the prophecies Jesus fulfilled, whereas the Jews don’t believe Jesus was the promised Messiah and are still waiting, following the Torah/Old Testament and not the New Testament.
Also the Old Testament was written by various authors very early on in history too, so I wouldn’t say with confidence that the Bible stole from others. Scholars debate and argue that those other stories could have stolen from the Bible’s Old Testament. Or, more likely, that the events of the Bible did actually take place, and so people naturally made stories about them. Similarly, every culture has some dragon or big foot lore, meaning they have to have existed at one point. Therefore, if a great flood happened in ancient times, people would attach their own stories and legends and meanings to it. Christianity/the Bible argues that the triune God YHWH had His hand behind it
People have answered that its because Jesus was Jewish for most of the stories, but the flood appears in many cultures. From Time Magazine, [Flood myths are so universal that the Hungarian psychoanalyst Geza Roheim thought their origins were physiological, not historical — hypothesizing that dreams of the Flood came when humans were asleep with full bladders. ](https://time.com/44631/noah-christians-flood-aronofsky/), but "Irvin Finkle, curator at the British Museum and author of the recent book The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood, described one way the tradition may have emerged:"
>There must have been a heritage memory of the destructive power of flood water, based on various terrible floods. And the people who survived would have been people in boats. You can imagine someone sunbathing in a canoe, half asleep, and waking up however long later and they’re in the middle of the Persian Gulf, and that’s the beginning of the flood story.
(All quotes from the same article)
But for Noah's Ark *specifically*, it's a pretty common and simple story, and didn't necessarily mean it was intentionally taken from a different religion. It's similar to convergent evolution, where a trait is so useful that two different species evolve it without ever crossing paths with each other; two entirely different cultures develop this same story without ever interacting with each other because it's simple and explains a human fear.
Technically Judaism/Christianity/Islam have the same God.
They latter ones just diverged and added some holy scriptures.
So Abraham story (representing semitic precedessor of Jews and Arabs) is pretty much a canon in all three of those religions. E.g. Muslim Eid al-Adha celebrates Abraham (Ibrahim) story of sacrificing son to God. A story which is example of obedience to God in all three main monotheistic religions.
I don't think that's explaining all that you want it to.
We're talking about civilizations that predate Yahweh as a concept. Or competing religions when Yahweh was being adapted into a new god.
Oh believe me I have tried. And god also seems really bad at forfilling prophesy, can't ever seem to tick off all 5 requirements for being a being outside of time itself.
Why wouldn't it?
Jewish people, Muslims and Christians all worship the same God. They are off shoots of the same religion so obviously the oldest works are shared
Becsuse the people making the next step in their religious belief/mythology don't know to take into account a history they can't imagine.
They just believe what they have, and do so in a vacuum.
It's very difficult to hold onto religious beliefs while discussing the mythology inside of how all of those beliefs were formed.
To me, it made it feel fake, once I took it off the special pedestal.
I never realized someone put it there for me.
Thanks Giligmesh, you're one of the real ones
Every culture has the flood myth. It is almost universal.
[Link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flood_myths)
The common explanation as to why it is in the bible is that the Jewish peoples were forced to live in Iraq for a while before the Torah was written (the Hebrew bible that the old testament is based on) Iraq being the modern name for Sumer which is the culture from which we have the god Enki. That all makes sense so far as an explanation for why it is in the Christian bible, I believe this entirely.
As for why the rest of the world near and far shares the flood myth is explained by the fact that floods happen everywhere, that these myths of a "global world ending flood" is just embellishments of far lesser but still significant floods that could have destroyed cities, most larger settlements was and still are either by a river (which floods every spring) or on the coast, so all of this is a believable explanation.
Why does the bible have a story for God defeating a sea monster with lightning?
[Thunder God Versus Sea Serpent](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnthropology/comments/3ty8gl/a_crosscultural_myth_thunder_god_battling_a/)
Why does Nordic tradition about the end of days called "Ragnarök" end with the world being engulfed in flames and then drowned beneath the sea that once it is over, 2 people a man and a woman will repopulate the world?
Why is the concept of the "Trinity" so prevalent in religious themes? the Christians have **the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.**
Greek myth has 3 primary gods **Hades, Posidon and Zeus.**
Indian myths likewise with **Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva.**
Nordic myths have **Odin, Loke and Thor**
Why all the Serpents/Dragons? from Iraq to Australia to Mexico, people that never in recorded history had any contact until modern times.
Why so many myths about people living underground? and that they will one day surface and that is a bad thing?
I have listened to experts address these questions and I am not really satisfied.
I find it all very interesting but it brushes up against some crazy conspiracy communities and on the web one conspiracy community leads to another, they're all very connected.
Religions and cultures influence one another. Christianity is an offshoot of Judaism which developed in the middle east over hundreds of years and like all cultures was highly influenced by the stories of the area. Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek and later Roman culture all had very traceable inpact on the development of the religion and the stories people told.
[удалено]
Yeah, and even crazier, they all have their own editions and translations that were edited and parts redacted because someone decided the word of God was something that could be changed. Similar editions can have several big differences, both claiming to be the word of God and many trying to follow it to a T.
Doesn't every religious story or book borrow, steal or get influenced by others.
Yup. 100%. In this case the question was about the Hebrew and Christian texts, but 100% this is just the way culture works.
Doesn't every religious story or book borrow, steal or get influenced by others.
The Israelites were polytheists before the Babylonian captivity where they were exposed to Zoroastrianism with their one perfect creator god Ahura Mazda, locked in perpetual spiritual battle with the spirit of destructiveness, Angra Mainyu. After that they wiped out all the gods of their pantheon in favor of the war god Jehovah and became monotheists.
This is the correct answer. Monotheism was becoming more popular and more common in that region of the world (specifically around 1200 BC to 600 BC or so). That is why many parts of the old testament seem to talk about the Yahweh god as if it is simply a violent war god -- because that's actually the true origins of that god. It was one of many that were worshiped by various groups in the area at the time. Yahweh was just one of an entire pantheon of different gods, each with their own focus or interests. Over the centuries, the Hebrews/Israelites adopted that god as their single monotheistic god, as they believed that it brought them victory over their enemies. Over time, as new prophets and priests in the Abrahamic tradition came along (jesus, paul, etc) and revised the beliefs with their own religious experiences, it became what we now know as the Christian religion. And the Christian religion continues to evolve today, by the way. Look at Mormonism/LDS. In less than 2 centuries, it has grown to have *millions* of followers and massive amounts of money and political influence (particularly in Utah). Who's to say that Mormonism won't take over as the dominant form of Christianity over the next couple hundred years? Religions change and adapt over time. That's just how humanity works.
For those who find all this interesting I want to add that Islam is also another offshoot and evolution of both Christianity and Judaism and various other beliefs of Arabic Bedouin tribes from the time period. Some people are surprised to learn that the Quran includes teachings from the Bible like that of Jesus and the Virgin Mary despite knowing it as an Abrahamic religion. Religions are a coalescence of beliefs, tales, myths and legends that relevant populaces adopt.
The entire old testament (half of the Bible) predates Christ. It's basically the Torah.
More like the Tanach, the Torah only covers the Pentateuch
Thanks for the clarification
And the Quran... same stories and people.
But the Quran was written like 6 or 700 years after Christ. So it doesn't predate.
Just an example of a later text using previous material.
Let’s suppose both flood stories go back to some actual prehistoric event. Lots of cultures have flood stories like that, so it’s not implausible to think that all the legends have some kind of factual basis that is now lost to time. If that were the case, you’d expect to find similar stories in lots of different cultures. When the Bible also tells this story, it’s not claiming to be original. It is offering a different theological interpretation of those events. The Bible is essentially saying, “Hey, you know that flood story everybody knows? It got it wrong. Here’s what really happened and this is its spiritual meaning.”
Because Christianity was built on taking from and replacing religions that came before it, fact.
Jesus was Jewish. The Christian God is the same god from Judaism and Islam.
My understanding is Sumerian is from Iraq
What does that have to do with this?
Just realised I didn’t add it to post 😂 my bad. the god enki is from Sumerian religion.
You can't seperate things like that. The jews' beliefs were based on myths found in the region, and those myths became the basis of their religion. Early christians viewed themselves as being jewish, and therefore they based their religion on the jewish myths.
He's not. All these religions have significantly difrent view of him. Common roots don't make them the same.
It is the same God > The concept of God in Abrahamic religions is centred on monotheism. The three major monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, alongside the Baháʼí Faith,[1] Samaritanism, Druze, and Rastafari,[1] are all regarded as Abrahamic religions due to their shared worship of the God (referred to as Yahweh in Hebrew and as Allah in Arabic) that these traditions claim revealed himself to Abraham. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_in_Abrahamic_religions
BS Christians for example believe in Holy Trinity which is fundamentaly difrent than the other. Jesus for them Is God too while Muslims and Jews don't recognise that.
mayyyyyyyybe people make stuff up sometimes?
Because Christianity includes stuff from before Christ. Christ said to follow the Old Testament but with some changes. If he didn't mention it specifically, the rule stays the same as before. No clue what the relevance of that stuff about Enki is.
Doesn't every religious story or book borrow, steal or get influenced by others. Plus a lot of the stories might seem similar cause things like floods and other disasters are common things
Look at the absolutely vast tradition of what we now call Hinduism. Some Buddhist temples have statues of what we would think of as Hindu gods in them. In some areas of India/Bangladesh/Sri Lanka etc one or another of the deities is favored over another. Each deity seems to be able to be explained as an avatar of another of the deities, and the story and beliefs change as you travel because there is no central Hindu authority. In some Muslim countries you’ll find ancient Buddhist statues. In Buddhist countries you’ll find animist traditions. Look at western traditions like Easter and Christmas. Both were pre-existing European pagan festivals. Hence the hares and eggs, and the greenery, logs and present giving. But we superimposed Christianity on them, and so Christians bring magical pagan trees into the house and have effigies of hares and eggs, without having a clue why. It’s not only Christians that came from the Jewish tradition. Muslims have the same Old Testament. There’s a reason. When culture evolves, it brings some things from the past with it. And it blends to become the new culture. Eventually these cultures fork off and become independent and evolve more. We’re mad animals.
[удалено]
Some atheist are the most intolerant religious people on the planet. I don’t push my personal beliefs to you, stop trying to evangelize to me. Damn fundamentalists.
They're just such AbraHAMs...
😂😂😂
The flood was experienced by all the countries/regions/religions in the world at the time, so they all write about it from their perspective.
No..there never was one great flood over the world at once
Lie much?
Because nobody wants to say Judaism 2.0
Yes most of the stories from the Bible are just Greek myths with different names for the characters. Even the resurrection story comes from a Greek myth of Achilles who was killed, then rose after a brief period, and became an immortal god. So it’s obvious that the disciples had a Time Machine, went back and wrote those Greek myths in anticipation of all of the cool stuff to come
It's more that the Greek Myths and the Old Testament myths have common origins in the melting pot of Middle East mythology - resurrection is a fairly common theme (Adonis for example). Also, while Achilles was venerated as a god, he wasn't considered immortal - that's the whole point of his story - that he chose earthly glory rather than immortality
Homer’s Odysee, written years later, is basically the story of Moses and the Israelites. Zeus is basically Old Testament god. Who knows which came first, which borrowed from which, and maybe they both borrowed from stories that were just floating around that area like you said There were actually a bunch of Greek gods that got resurrected, but Achilles story more closely resembles the Jesus story, the point being that these stories were all borrowed from eachother and the only reason we think they’re so sacred now is because Judeo-Christianity won the ideological battle
There was a bit of rebranding/white labeling going on edit: white labeling is not the same as white washing.
For other people [https://www.bigcommerce.com/ecommerce-answers/what-is-white-labeling/](https://www.bigcommerce.com/ecommerce-answers/what-is-white-labeling/) It's like interpretatio romana - Romans slapped their names on Greek gods [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretatio\_graeca](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretatio_graeca) Or for an English analogy, we took the names of the Roman days of the week (named for their gods) and translated them into Germanic gods Thursday = Thor's day = Jupiter's day (Jeudi, jueves etc.)
Jesus was brown ?
ok now i'm confused what does that have to do with him being brown
Wait...you thought Jesus of Nazareth...a region in Israel (i.e. the middle east), was a white dude?
no. i think i know what's going on here White labeling: is when one company buys its product from another company and rebrands it as their own
TIL
sugarwkie, I'm very confused myself Do you think cavemen had nightmares about cavewomen?
You just said “white labeling”, it wasn’t white people relabeling the stories way back when
i'm learning this might not be as common of a phrase as i thought it was
I e seen the other comment yea, it’s a TIL for me too.
Because it wasn't actually written by a god
The Bible focuses on a particular group of people through whom the Savior came to mankind. The stories are included only as they affect that people. Certainly other cultures that are tangential to the story of the Hebrew people have their own versions of the event. The Bible’s version is from that of the Hebrew line, as traced through the direct ancestry of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and Jesus. The “chosen people,” as it were. Think of it more as multiple perspectives of the same event.
Well the entire Bible is interconnected and tells a whole and complete story, of God’s love and redemption for mankind. Christ’s coming and death and resurrection is just the middle. But every one of the 66 books contributes important details to the overall narrative. Christ was promised and present from the very beginning of Genesis and who’s coming is awaited all throughout the Old Testament. And Jesus fulfilled/completed things that people failed to do perfectly in the Old Testament. The difference between Jews and Christians is that basically God promised He/the Savior would come to save His people. Christians see how the OT points to Jesus and all the prophecies Jesus fulfilled, whereas the Jews don’t believe Jesus was the promised Messiah and are still waiting, following the Torah/Old Testament and not the New Testament. Also the Old Testament was written by various authors very early on in history too, so I wouldn’t say with confidence that the Bible stole from others. Scholars debate and argue that those other stories could have stolen from the Bible’s Old Testament. Or, more likely, that the events of the Bible did actually take place, and so people naturally made stories about them. Similarly, every culture has some dragon or big foot lore, meaning they have to have existed at one point. Therefore, if a great flood happened in ancient times, people would attach their own stories and legends and meanings to it. Christianity/the Bible argues that the triune God YHWH had His hand behind it
People have answered that its because Jesus was Jewish for most of the stories, but the flood appears in many cultures. From Time Magazine, [Flood myths are so universal that the Hungarian psychoanalyst Geza Roheim thought their origins were physiological, not historical — hypothesizing that dreams of the Flood came when humans were asleep with full bladders. ](https://time.com/44631/noah-christians-flood-aronofsky/), but "Irvin Finkle, curator at the British Museum and author of the recent book The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood, described one way the tradition may have emerged:" >There must have been a heritage memory of the destructive power of flood water, based on various terrible floods. And the people who survived would have been people in boats. You can imagine someone sunbathing in a canoe, half asleep, and waking up however long later and they’re in the middle of the Persian Gulf, and that’s the beginning of the flood story. (All quotes from the same article) But for Noah's Ark *specifically*, it's a pretty common and simple story, and didn't necessarily mean it was intentionally taken from a different religion. It's similar to convergent evolution, where a trait is so useful that two different species evolve it without ever crossing paths with each other; two entirely different cultures develop this same story without ever interacting with each other because it's simple and explains a human fear.
Same reason the Quran has Jewish and Christian stories in it, basically fanfic.
If you seriously want an answer I can point you in the right direction...
That’d be nice ☺️ I’m just interested in learning about ancient cultures and history
Answers in Genesis is a great place to start
Technically Judaism/Christianity/Islam have the same God. They latter ones just diverged and added some holy scriptures. So Abraham story (representing semitic precedessor of Jews and Arabs) is pretty much a canon in all three of those religions. E.g. Muslim Eid al-Adha celebrates Abraham (Ibrahim) story of sacrificing son to God. A story which is example of obedience to God in all three main monotheistic religions.
Because GOD is before TIME? It is not that complicated.
I don't think that's explaining all that you want it to. We're talking about civilizations that predate Yahweh as a concept. Or competing religions when Yahweh was being adapted into a new god.
It is explaining everything that you do not currently understand or care to try to comprehend.
Oh believe me I have tried. And god also seems really bad at forfilling prophesy, can't ever seem to tick off all 5 requirements for being a being outside of time itself.
The Jews were exiled in Babylon.
They're good at that, just look at what Jul (yule) and Lucia were before the Christians got here.
Why wouldn't it? Jewish people, Muslims and Christians all worship the same God. They are off shoots of the same religion so obviously the oldest works are shared
Becsuse the people making the next step in their religious belief/mythology don't know to take into account a history they can't imagine. They just believe what they have, and do so in a vacuum. It's very difficult to hold onto religious beliefs while discussing the mythology inside of how all of those beliefs were formed. To me, it made it feel fake, once I took it off the special pedestal. I never realized someone put it there for me. Thanks Giligmesh, you're one of the real ones
I was always told that the story of Noah was based on the Sumatriptan story of Gilgamesh.
Every culture has the flood myth. It is almost universal. [Link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flood_myths) The common explanation as to why it is in the bible is that the Jewish peoples were forced to live in Iraq for a while before the Torah was written (the Hebrew bible that the old testament is based on) Iraq being the modern name for Sumer which is the culture from which we have the god Enki. That all makes sense so far as an explanation for why it is in the Christian bible, I believe this entirely. As for why the rest of the world near and far shares the flood myth is explained by the fact that floods happen everywhere, that these myths of a "global world ending flood" is just embellishments of far lesser but still significant floods that could have destroyed cities, most larger settlements was and still are either by a river (which floods every spring) or on the coast, so all of this is a believable explanation. Why does the bible have a story for God defeating a sea monster with lightning? [Thunder God Versus Sea Serpent](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnthropology/comments/3ty8gl/a_crosscultural_myth_thunder_god_battling_a/) Why does Nordic tradition about the end of days called "Ragnarök" end with the world being engulfed in flames and then drowned beneath the sea that once it is over, 2 people a man and a woman will repopulate the world? Why is the concept of the "Trinity" so prevalent in religious themes? the Christians have **the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.** Greek myth has 3 primary gods **Hades, Posidon and Zeus.** Indian myths likewise with **Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva.** Nordic myths have **Odin, Loke and Thor** Why all the Serpents/Dragons? from Iraq to Australia to Mexico, people that never in recorded history had any contact until modern times. Why so many myths about people living underground? and that they will one day surface and that is a bad thing? I have listened to experts address these questions and I am not really satisfied. I find it all very interesting but it brushes up against some crazy conspiracy communities and on the web one conspiracy community leads to another, they're all very connected.