Old Testament

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Term Paper Title	Old Testament
# of Words	2076
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	8.3

Old Testament

The Old Testament is a compilation, and like every compilation it has a
wide variety of contributors who, in turn, have their individual influence
upon the final work.  It is no surprise, then, that there exist certain
parallels between the Enuma Elish, the cosmogony of the Babylonians, and
the Book of Genesis, the first part of the Pentateuch section of the Bible.
In fact, arguments may be made that other Near Eastern texts, particularly
Sumerian, have had their influences in Biblical texts.  The extent of this
'borrowing', as it were, is not limited to the Bible; the Enuma Elish has
its own roots in Sumerian mythology, predating the Enuma Elish by nearly a
thousand years.   A superficial examination of this evidence would
erroneously lead one to believe that the Bible is somewhat a collection of
older mythology re-written specifically for the Semites.  In fact, what
develops is that the writers have addressed each myth as a separate issue,
and what the writers say is that their God surpasses every other.  Each
myth or text that has a counterpart in the Bible only serves to further an
important idea among the Hebrews: there is but one God, and He is
omnipotent, omniscient, and other-worldly; He is not of this world, but
outside it, apart from it.  The idea of a monotheistic religion is first
evinced in recorded history with Judaism, and it is vital to see that
instead of being an example of plagiarism, the Book of Genesis is a
meticulously composed document that will set apart the Hebrew God from the
others before, and after.

To get a clear picture of the way the Book of Genesis may have been formed
(because we can only guess with some degree of certainty), we must place in
somewhere in time, and then define the cultures in that time.  The
influences, possible and probable, must be illustrated, and then we may
draw our conclusions.
If we trace back to the first appearance of the Bible in written form, in
its earliest translation, we arrive at 444 B.C.. Two texts, components of
the Pentateuch referred to as 'J' and 'E' texts, can be traced to around
650 B.C.  Note that 'J' refers to Yahweh (YHVH) texts, characterized by the
use of the word 'Yahweh' or 'Lord' in accounts; 'E' refers to Elohist
texts, which use, naturally, 'Elohim' in its references to God.1 But 650
B.C. isn't our oldest reference to the 'J' and 'E' texts; they can be
traced, along with the other three strands of the Pentateuch, to at least
1000 B.C.  Our first compilation...

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