I believe their are a lot of honest sincere atheist and agnostic people who are interested in the truth. Truth is something many people desire. When someone doesn't have a deep understanding of spiritual things, it's easy to find many errors and contradictions, especially if that's your motive. I have many answers to many statements that skeptics use as contradictory, errors, and in this case plagiarism. The Bible has many similar stories to earlier published stories, but that doesn't make it guilty of plagiarism. For example, Adam and Eve obviously told their offspring of the Great Fall, and that story has been passed down from generation to generation. Now whomever has the earliest record it would seem as though they were the authors of the original story, whereas in reality they were the first to record it. So when we see a similar story in another culture and language, it doesn't necessarily mean that they plagiarized, it could just be that they decided to record the story later or maybe they had older manuscripts that were destroyed... This concept is applicable to other stories in the Bible. So if you are a believer, don't defer your faith. And if you don't believe or have doubts it's time to regain your faith. Remember faith is the substance of things Hoped for, evidence of things Unseen and without faith it is impossible to please God, and anything that is not faith is sin (Hebrews chpt. 11).
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So why didn't the bible make reference and why did it change the names of the characters?
Parent comment
I believe their are a lot of honest sincere atheist and agnostic people who are interested in the truth. Truth is something many people desire. When someone doesn't have a deep understanding of spiritual things, it's easy to find many errors and contradictions, especially if that's your motive. I have many answers to many statements that skeptics use as contradictory, errors, and in this case plagiarism. The Bible has many similar stories to earlier published stories, but that doesn't make it guilty of plagiarism. For example, Adam and Eve obviously told their offspring of the Great Fall, and that story has been passed down from generation to generation. Now whomever has the earliest record it would seem as though they were the authors of the original story, whereas in reality they were the first to record it. So when we see a similar story in another culture and language, it doesn't necessarily mean that they plagiarized, it could just be that they decided to record the story later or maybe they had older manuscripts that were destroyed... This concept is applicable to other stories in the Bible. So if you are a believer, don't defer your faith. And if you don't believe or have doubts it's time to regain your faith. Remember faith is the substance of things Hoped for, evidence of things Unseen and without faith it is impossible to please God, and anything that is not faith is sin (Hebrews chpt. 11).