I used to love reading all the ancient creation myths from across the world as they detailed the creation of the universe and how man came about. When you start reading ancient texts, the oldest being from Sumeria you’ll find many a scripture you would recognize. Most of us grew up listening to later plagiarized versions of them found in later texts like the Bible or Koran using different names, places and events as our ancestors merged them into their own ideology. Take the flood myth, there’s approx 270 versions of it across the globe. The story of Jesus is no different as there are many different accounts of messiah’s prior to his birth, all of which have very similar accounts like being born on a certain day, dying and being resurrected 3 days later etc, etc, etc.

Take Moses for example, there are 72 different versions of his birth myth i.e. being put it in a basket by his mother and set of down stream to be later found and brought up by someone else and his rise to kingship. “The Mesopotamian work known as the Sargon Birth Legend offers the most striking parallels to the Exodus account of Moses’ birth. It relates the birth story of Sargon the Great, an Akkadian emperor who ruled a number of Sumerian city-states around 2300 BCE, around 800 years before Moses. The infant boy is born into great peril: His mother is a high priestess, and he is illegitimate. As a result of these circumstances, his mother decides to place him on a river in a reed basket. The boy is rescued and raised by a gardener named Akki. He lives as a modest gardener in Akki’s service until the goddess Ishtar takes an interest in him, and puts him on a path to kingship.”

As with all cultures in the past have done, each holds onto one version or the other, plagiarizes it, make some changes to suit their ideology etc. and then use them to justify whatever they need to. It’s why they say Christianity, Judaism and Islam all originate from the same source with different names for different prophets, places and people with different events added for good measure. It’s the differences between these different versions that often cause more harm than good because lets be honest, whose version is actually the correct version when they all claim each others is blasphemy and will fight to their dying breath over whose god is better.

It’s why I can never become religious, I’ve learnt too much already about our ancient past. Besides you don’t have to follow a religion to be a good person, you don’t have to believe in a fear based ideology to ensure your place in the heavens. Even my old man being a scientist and all thought he was an atheist. Yet if you were to ask him to define god using the knowledge he has attained he’ll describe exactly what spiritualist have been saying for eons, just without all the labels and fanfare that surrounds it all. There’s only one creative force that brought all this into being, and if you look close enough you can find gods image that runs through all creation and not just mankind.