Comparative Religions Criticism-Please Reply

This will be the last article on the issue of biblical criticism.  After this, I will be writing articles on studying the Bible from different perspectives (social class, ethnicity/race, and gender).

In this last article, I would like to invite you to study the Bible in terms of its religious settings.
By this I mean, that if we are serious students of the Bible, we will compare what biblical religion has or does not have in common with other religions.  This is called "Comparative Religions Criticism," i.e. the differences and similarities of non-biblical religions are taken into consideration.

We can compare the contents of biblical religion with the religious beliefs and practices of the Hebrew/Jewish community.  There are several things which we can point out to, for example, in the Old Testament that have a strong similarity to pre-Old Testament literature.  For example, we have;

1.  The Babylonian accounts of Creation and the Flood (the Enuma Elish and the Epics of Gilgamesh).  Both of these accounts were written at least 500 years before the Genesis accounts of creation and the flood. The accounts are similar in a lot of respects.  It raises the question of whether the writer of Genesis borrowed from these documents to compose his/her account of these events.

2.  The sacrificial system- Long before the Hebrew people came into being as a nation, there were other nations that practiced animal and human sacrifice as a means of appeasing the gods.  Once again we ask if the Hebrews borrowed this and incorporated it into their own religious practice, or was there something unique about the Hebrew/Jewish sacrificial system?

3.  The priesthood- Pre-Hebrew religious communities had priests who served as "mediators' between the gods and the people.  The priesthood within the Hebrew community served the same function.  Did the Hebrews borrow this from their neighbors?

In the New Testament, we find literature which reflects strong similarities with pre-Christian religions, especially among the Greeks and the Romans.  The Greeks and the Romans included in their religious practices epics and legends about :

1.  Virgin births

2.  Gods who died and resurrected

3.  The gods who would eventually overcome evil and establish a just society.

We can ask if New Testament religion is original and unique, or does it represent building on pre-existing religious practices in the environment in which Christianity originated?

For those of us who subscribe to the biblical message, the questions can be the following?

1.  Is biblical religion rooted exclusively in God's initiative to be revealed to humankind without the mediation of previously established historical religious ideas?

2.  Does God's revelation, whether written or oral, include the possibility of pre-Jewish and pre-Christian beliefs and practices?

3. Is it necessary for us to believe that for the Bible to be considered "the Word of God," that it does not and cannot include the possibility of borrowing from religious systems that previously existed?

Please share with us your view on these three questions for our discussion.  It should make for a very interesting conversation.

Grace and peace,

Dr. Juan A. Ayala-Carmona