The Old Testament

How much actual history is there in the Old Testament? This topic comes up again and again in discussions about God and religion. Is the Old Testament - or the Bible in its entirety - just a "fairy tale" as they say? Well, that is only partially true.  

In the first chapters of Genesis after creation, mythical stories talk about the development of self-consciousness. These stories seem to contain at least a vague idea that there were once people without this most essential aspect of being human. The punishments of God after the "Fall" are simply the consequences of the transition to agriculture about 12 000 years ago. At that time, men became heads of families and did the heavy work in the fields. Women were largely confined to the home, where they gave birth to and cared for a much larger number of children than in the earlier Paleolithic and Mesolithic eras.

The Great Flood is mythic, of course. It's impossible for two of every living being to fit in a boat. There is no archaeological evidence of a worldwide flood. This story is contained in many ancient Near Eastern mythologies with small variations. 

Most biblical scholars believe that the biblical Flood story is adapted from an earlier Mesopotamian version. Behind chapters 6-9 of Genesis are Mesopotamian flood traditions, the Atrahasis-myth, and the Gilgamesh-epic (XI). 

Since the nineteenth century, we have known that the authors of Genesis took a pre-existing Mesopotamian narrative of the Flood and its survivor and adapted it to an Israelite conception. The Flood story contains lore from the period known as the Pre-Pottery Neolithic (10 000-6500 BCE). This was a time when the water levels were rising rapidly everywhere due to the melting glaciers after the last ice age. At the same time, people built settlements and domesticated animals. In the biblical flood myth, strands of oral traditions have been combined into a singular story.

The Tower of Babel is an allusion to the early civilizations in Mesopotamia that developed in the 4th millennium BCE. First the Sumerians, then the Akkadians, Amorites, Assyrians, and many other peoples ruled Mesopotamia, building their civilizations on each other's foundations. In short, chapters 2-11 of Genesis portray the ancient Jews' understanding of events in their history in mythic language. 

In Genesis 22, Abraham almost sacrifices his son Isaac to God, but an angel intervenes. Instead, Abraham sacrifices a ram. This story is probably a folktale. and it has parallels in Greek mythology in a story about Nefel and Athamas. Just as King Athamas is about to sacrifice his children, their mother, Nephel sends a ram to fetch Phrixus and save him. 

In another story, Agamemnon's daughter is to be sacrificed to Artemis. A miracle happens, and Ifigeneia is spirited away at the last moment, and a hind takes her place.

In verses Genesis 32:24-30 the patriarch Jacob wrestles with God. This scene is similar to Greek mythology where Menelaus wrestles with the god Proteus. Both have been away for a long time and then wrestle with a god. This is the last obstacle before returning home. In their wrestling match, both of them keep their opponents still for a long time, in order to a kind of test. Each of them has a discussion with god and receive a blessing, in the form of a privileged position and a long life for himself and his family. Jacob becomes a patriarch and Menelaus a hero.

The story of David and Goliath is exaggerated in the style of a legend or even a fairy tale. It is possible that David defeated a great opponent during his career, but like all legends, this story has grown over time. It is possible that the model of the story is the Egyptian Sinuhe. He fights the invincible champion of Retenu, which decides the outcome for the war. In battle, Sinuhe skillfully dodges the enemy’s arrows and shoots the enemy in the neck with his own bow. Sinuhe proceeds to kill the champion with his own weapon. The story is well known from 2000 BCE on.

There are books in the Old Testament that should be considered essentially historical. But they are by no means objective descriptions of what actually happened. The Deuteronomistic history, the books from Deuteronomy to 2. Kings, is an interpretation of the disasters of 722 and 586 BCE, that made it possible to accept the loss of Israel without abandoning Yahweh. The loss of Israel was not to be taken as evidence that Yahweh was not the highest God or that he had abandoned his people. Israel's loss meant the opposite: Yahweh was a universal God who could even use other nations to judge his own people. These judgments were clear to all: Israel had been condemned, while Judah had taken a different path. Yahweh rewarded keeping the covenant law with Judah's political continuation.

Yes, there is a historical core in the Old Testament. The stories are not pure fiction. However, it is a known fact among scholars that these stories are blended with fiction. The Old Testament includes myth, saga, legends, ethiologies, history, annals, reports, anecdotes, and novella. (Watson E. Mills, Roger Aubrey Bullard - Mercer dictionary of the Bible – Genre in the Old Testament, page 323).

Professor George Coats names the principal narrative genres in the Old Testament as saga, tale, novella, legend, history, report, fable, etiology and myth. (Genesis, 1983, 5-10).

So to answer the question at the beginning of the page: enough to convince a believer that the book is valid historically. And not nearly enough to convince anyone else. For anyone else, archaeological evidence never gets off the ground (pun intended). How do we know that the God depicted in these stories existed anywhere else but inside the minds of human beings? 

There is no reason to assume so.