ATHEISTS (and any historians out there) Please help! ^_^?

To answer the question......no one really knows who wrote the first few chapters. It is believed that Moses wrote the book of Genesis but more than likely, it was a collection of stories jotted down by several people and incorporated into one book called "Genesis" (the beginning). It's a pretty fitting title, isn't it? It's a book about the beginning of the earth and man, it's about the beginning of a new nation struggling to make a name for themselves and the beginning to the laws that still exist and have pertainence to this very day. Most religions from all around the world have the same or very similar stories to what is written in Genesis. But is that because everyone has heard the same stories and those stories were passed from one trader to the next much like stories of our own family history has been passed down from father to son until someone finally decided to write it down or did they really happen? If Adam really lived to be close to a 1000 years old, then he had a lot of time to tell a lot of people how he and his wife got kicked out of the most beautiful garden in the world. But was there really an "Adam and Eve"?????

I'm gonna tell you a story that I think is pretty close to how these events came to be written down in Genesis and how almost every religion has pretty much the same stories if not very similar stories. When I was a kid, my brother and I used to complain because every morning we would have to wait for the bus to pick us up for school. Sometimes it would be raining a little bit, sometimes it would be windy, sometimes it would just be too hot and my dad told us that he had to walk to school every day whether it rained or snowed and blah blah blah....and OH HOW BAD HE HAD IT when he was a kid.......we've ALL heard this story, right? Well, one day several years later, we were driving through the town my dad grew up in and he was showing us all the hang out spots he used to go to and then we turned down this one street and he says, "And there's the house I grew up in.....oh....and there's the school I used to go to.".......IT WAS ACROSS THE STREET?!?!?!? The story he told us way back when shut us up and made us stop complaining and now that I have my own kid, I find myself realizing the very good reasons for parents to tell their kids those kinds of exaggerated stories. If you think about the stories that you've heard your own parents tell you, and you really think about what is going on in Genesis, you can easily imagine a family out tilling the earth and a teenage boy complaining and the father, finally getting pissed at all the complaining exclaims, "Well, if it wasn't for your grandparents, Adam and Eve, we wouldn't have to be doing this right now, so stop your griping and get back to tilling your corn row?!?!?" Or a mother listening to her preteen daughter complaining about her cramping and the mother saying, "Well, if it wasn't for Eve, we wouldn't have this problem". Brothers have gotten jealous of each other since the beginning of time too and to stop some squabbling, why wouldn't you tell them a story of "their great uncle's son's" (or whomever seems fitting at the time) who got so jealous of each other that one named Cain killed the other named Abel and Cain was doomed to roam the earth with the bad people? I'm not trying to knock the bible. I'm not trying to say that the written scripture wasn't ordained by God.....because after all.......they do have some pretty good principles behind them. But I am saying that if you try to say that the stories that are told in Genesis are literal facts, then "you're missing the boat for the sea". And I've gotta tell you......until you posted this question and I started thinking about it.......lets just say alot of things have clicked in the last hour that it has taken me to respond to this.

Thank you for posting this question. I hope it helped you as much as it helped me.

You seem to be asking a couple of questions. I'll take a stab at them for you. Who is the source of the Genesis narrative? Nobody knows for sure. Historically, Moses was seen as the author of the first five books of the bible. In the past century, however, this notion has been challenged based on literary analysis of the biblical text. There are still many scholars who believe that Moses was the source of the traditions recorded in the Pentateuch, but most feel that the text we have today is the product of subsequent writers editing and reworking Moses' words.

As to your second question, I think you are misreading the text of Genesis. It's not a polemic against agriculture. Adam's curse was not that he had to till the ground, but rather that the ground would resist his efforts. I think if you read the narrative carefully you'll see what I mean. Genesis was given to Israel. And Israel was an agrarian society after they settled in Canaan. So it's extremely unlikely that Moses, or his supposed redactors, would create a narrative that subverted their own way of life. At any rate, that's my take on the matter for what it's worth.

peace

Edit: I should add that Moses was most likely been basing his work on an extant oral tradition. So when I say that nobody knows for sure, that's what I mean. Who can possibly pin down the original source for such a tradition? I suppose you could say Adam himself was the source. But there is no possible way to verify a statement like that.

Simple really the bible is not what it seems!!!

The Roman Emperor Constantine produced the bible and he was a pagan not god!!! He also organized Christianity into the Holly Roman Catholic Church!!

What a wonder full disinformation and deception campaign he waged against his Christian enemies - so good in fact that Christians are still following the deception to this day!!!

This is backed up by the historical fact that there is not one single mention of Jesus in the entire Roman record - that is right - not one!!! At the same time as he was supposed to have been around there were a number of Jews claiming to be the messiah - all of whom are well recorded!!

Outside of the bible he is not mentioned in anything until many years after his supposed death!!

Moses was inspired by God . And in these days people wrote down there histories and the heads of households were to keep track of the genealogy and past down generation to generation--sorry had to share..God told

me too

This couldn't be answered by an historian, since this isn't history.

Most biblical scholars believe that it was written by Moses.

you'll have to ask in the history section....I am not a historian!

I always help when I can, but I'm not an historian... so I probably can't help you.

Apologies.

what is fact?

What question - please post your question.