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First, I collected stories with at least two contradictory accounts in the Bible. I wanted to show not only the existence of contradictions, which meant that at least one version of the story was untrue, I also wanted to explain how the contradictions came about, which to me was far more interesting. What was the story behind the story?

In many instances, the inconsistencies reflect the ongoing propaganda wars between the kingdoms of Judah and Israel. On other occasions, an early version of a story was replaced by a later version. This was particularly true in the Creation and flood accounts, where early Egyptian influences on Israel came into conflict with later Babylonian sources.

Second, I looked for biblical stories that closely paralleled earlier myths and legends from neighboring cultures. While in some cases the influences were obvious, as with the Babylonian flood myth, in many cases the task was quite difficult. Because of the biblical emphasis on monotheism, the authors had to eliminate references to or symbols of deities other than the Hebrew god. These changes were made by transforming foreign deities into human characters and sometimes changing the locale of the story.

As intended, this version usually disguised the true nature of the biblical story, making it difficult to identify the earlier mythological source. Nevertheless, in many instances the editors overlooked some of the telltale signs of these earlier sources and, even in disguised form, it is often possible to strip off the costumes and see what mythological elements the biblical authors masked.

The third category involved stories that simply couldn’t be true. I was concerned primarily with archaeological data that indicated that events described in the Bible as happening within a particular time frame couldn’t have occurred at the time indicated. Several of these stories describe Israel’s destruction of enemy cities during the campaigns into the Transjordan and Canaan. The archaeological evidence shows that many of those cities didn’t exist in the time of Moses and Joshua.

In this category especially, I made a conscious decision to avoid stories of a miraculous nature where the sole argument to be raised would be a violation of the laws of physics. While I would be technically correct, for example, in dismissing the story of the seven days of Creation as a simple violation of scientific principles, there would be no purpose to including such stories. For people who believe in the ability of God to perform miracles that override the natural order, such arguments would be of no avail. For others, I would just be preaching the obvious, and there is nothing particularly interesting about that.

Still, I don’t ignore the miracles. But instead of simply dismissing them as a violation of the laws of physics, I chose instead to go behind the story, to look at what earlier influences gave rise to the biblical account, to show what sources the author relied upon in telling the story.

In the course of this book, I will make a number of arguments with which most biblical scholars agree. In several other instances, however, I offer new insights into puzzling matters that the academic community has yet to resolve adequately.

I am particularly enthusiastic about showing how Egyptian mythology and literature strongly influenced much of the early biblical history, especially with regard to Creation and the flood as well as the patriarchal narratives, a subject that has been irresponsibly ignored. The lack of attention to Egyptian influences on the Bible by both biblical scholars and Egyptologists is unfortunate. A conscious and deliberate effort exists to keep the two spheres separate, yet the Bible shows a long and continuous relationship between ancient Israel and Egypt. It places Israel’s formative years in Egypt, living an Egyptian lifestyle, educated in Egyptian ideas, and dwelling there for centuries before the Exodus. It describes Joseph as prime minister of the nation and married to the daughter of the chief priest of Heliopolis (biblical On), one of the most influential Egyptian cult and educational centers. His two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, were half-Egyptian and educated as Egyptians. Ephraim became heir to Joseph and founded the kingdom of Israel; Manasseh had the largest territorial base of all the tribes.

Moses, according to the biblical account, was raised and educated in the Egyptian royal court, and many members of his tribe, Levi, have Egyptian names. King Solomon married a pharaoh’s daughter and built an Egyptian temple in Jerusalem for her. Common sense dictates that she had a large retinue of Egyptian priests and servants to administer to the temple’s needs. Jeroboam, when he fled from Israel to escape Solomon’s wrath, dwelled in Egypt before leading Israel away from Judah.

And historically, Egypt had a powerful cultural influence on Canaan from well before the Exodus to late in the first millennium B.C. An eighth-century seal of a Hebrew official from the court of King Hoshea of Israel (c. 730 B.C.), for example, shows the official dressed in typical Egyptian garb and standing over an Egyptian winged-disk icon, indicating that Egyptian ideas heavily influenced the royal court of the kingdom of Israel.

As we go through the Creation and patriarchal stories, we will see how Egyptian mythology significantly influenced Hebrew interpretation of and beliefs about its earliest history. These influences bring us to the question of the origin of Hebrew monotheism. How, when, and where did it originate?

Biblical monotheism appears to have gone through an evolution. In the earliest stages, the Hebrews imagined an all-powerful Creator deity, but evidence of belief in other deities remains buried in the stories, most obviously in the form of angels. This appears to be the primary form in which Hebrew monotheism originated and the form in which it has fundamentally survived even into present times. The three major monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, still believe in a host of supernatural beings, particularly angels and the devil. They are beings created by the one all-powerful Creator just as the Egyptian deities were the product of the one all-powerful Egyptian Creator.

The idea of an all-powerful Creator who brought forth other supernatural beings has its roots in ancient Egypt. There it was a central belief in most religious cults that a single Creator was responsible for all of existence, including the appearance of other deities. The other nations of the Near East had no similar theology. It is the Egyptian views that initially influenced Hebrew understanding of the first times, and we will see that many of these Egyptian Creation myths are replicated in biblical history.

Over time, however, the nature of the theology changed. Whereas Egyptians also worshipped the many other deities created by the prime Creator, by the time of Moses, there is a new emphasis in which this Creator deity is deemed to be the only god to be worshipped. No one, for instance, ever worships God’s angels. This view is reflected in the biblical command,“Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” The idea that only one deity among many should be worshipped is known as henotheism rather than monotheism.

For a brief time in the mid-fourteenth century B.C., Egypt experienced a form of authoritarian monotheism under a pharaoh named Akhenaten. A full understanding of Akhenaten’s theology has yet to be developed, but its existence in a time when Israel was likely still in Egypt raises questions about what influence his ideas had on the educated Hebrew people in his realm. Biblical and Egyptological scholars go out of their way to build an unbreachable wall between Akhenaten and Moses, but it does not rest on solid factual foundations. In my previous book, The Moses Mystery: The African Origins of the Jewish People , (reprinted in paperback as The Bible Myth ), I examined the evidence and concluded that Moses served as chief priest of Akhenaten’s religious cult and that the Exodus resulted from a volatile religious feud between Akhenaten’s successors, who reinstated the traditional beliefs, and his followers, who lost control of Egypt after his death.

Regardless of my own views, the Hebrews depicted in the Bible never embraced a pure monotheism, nor was there a single universal religion. Many important biblical characters in post-Exodus times, for instance, had names ending in “Baal,” who was a major Canaanite deity. Gideon, one of the most famous of the early Judges, also was known as Jerubbaal, and Saul, first King of Israel, had a son named Eshbaal and this son succeeded him on the throne. These Baal names became an embarrassment to the final redactors of the early Bible books and they either added fictional glosses to the text to explain the apparent inconsistency or they changed the Baal name to “Bosheth,” a Hebrew word meaning shame.

Belief in other deities goes farther than naming conventions. For example, Solomon had many non-Hebrew wives and he built many religious shrines for them so they could worship their own non-Hebrew deities. Later scribes attributed the breakup of Solomon’s empire to a punishment by God for his apostasy. And Jeroboam, first king of Israel after the break from Judah, not only set up golden calves at cult sites, but established rival temples to the one in Jerusalem. And, throughout the period of the monarchy, biblical writers tell us that the Hebrews constantly succumbed to the religious influences of the Canaanites and Philistines.

Under King Josiah (640-609 B.C.), many severe religious reforms were instituted and strong opposition to idol worship emerged. Whether pure monotheism became part of Hebrew religion at this time we can’t know for sure. But, by this time, the earlier beliefs had become embedded in Hebrew traditions and writings. Ultimately, a single redactor or, most likely, a school of redactors sometime after the fifth century B.C. gathered the main sources and traditions together and produced the first version of biblical history in its present form, editing as best they could to eliminate inconsistencies between monotheism and earlier religious beliefs.

While myths often are based on erroneous or fictional history, they are literary artifacts. Just as artifacts from different layers of an archaeological site show us the historical and cultural development of a people, the existence of mythological layers tells us something about the people who believed in those myths. In 101 Myths of the Bible , we will look at the layers of mythological artifact and see what the stratifications reveal about how biblical history and culture came to be.

For convenience, I have arranged the biblical stories so that they closely follow their order of appearance in the Bible. I also have divided the collection into three sections, “Myths of the Beginning,” “Myths of the Founders,” and “Myths of the Heroes.” Because so many people believe the authors of the various Bible books were divinely inspired, and since this book explores the sources for many Bible stories, I prefer to think of this collection as a restoration of God’s footnotes for the Bible, putting back in the source citations the authors left out.