Today I was asked, “who wrote the bible”. Well, it’s a fascinating story and if you have an hour worth the effort to research. This is totally a historic interest not religious. And it is fascinating and the answer is based on identifying the writing styles of the original texts.
Scholars
Various scholars have given letters to each of the styles and looking at the use of language and colloquial terms can very generally date the writers. In many quarters it is cited that Moses was the author, troublesome as he falls into the King Arthur area of mythology. it’s an important area of thought as Moses is a link between Judaism, Islam and Christianity. Often the bible is attributed to God, I suspect all the authors wrote it in the name of god. no doubt people who consider themselves Christian are in decline. That said the values contained in the bible, tora and Quran are intrenched in human culture and we can have a chicken and egg debate about that. So I think the wider question is, “from where do we derive our values?” Or “What’s the origin of morality?” Probably the time of year, but interesting.
Morals
The question of where our morals come from is so interesting. Most would argue it dates back to when humans first cooperated for a common goal; hunting in groups was easier. Larger prey could be killed, and the meat had to be shared. This started a sharing morality. But then tribes still fought over the best hunting grounds. So where did “thy shall not kill” originate. I don’t have an answer. We can all see that animals have a morality; we see it in elephants collectively bringing up the babies of the heard. Of course so many animals fight but its is quite rare to find animals of the same species fight to the death. Even if it is territorial or a crime of passion. The fight to the death seems to be a human thing.
The Great Filter
If the post-apocalyptic genre is a reflection of reality, one wonders how did we get this far. Why didn’t we eliminate our race long ago, fighting over the most fertile place to set up camp? Sadly though, the Great Filter theory will probably affect humankind very soon. It is the idea that no intelligent life form has visited earth because intelligent life will always wipe itself out, hence why no aliens have visited us. I think one only has to watch an episode of the walking dead to understand this theory is extremely likely. Perhaps Morality is only skin deep! #jgtvdirector #divergentthinking #whowrotethebible #morality #thegreatfilter
