re: #315 Walter L. Newton

And the “Torah paints a rather unique picture.” You must be kidding? One of the major sections of the 5 books are the laws, which are historically based on much of the legal structures that Hammurabi penned. The creations stories (yes, there are two) had a definate literary dependance on the Gilgamesh saga… and I could go on and on.

This is textual criticism facts, a science, not beliefs.

IIRC, the flood story and the Gilgamesh saga are often referenced in common, but not the creation story? And there is one creation story and one summary, not two contradictory stories. One of the stories, IIRC, was not written in a manner designed to be read in a temporal fashion.