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Index to Creationist Claims,  edited by Mark Isaak,    Copyright © 2004
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Claim CH184:

The Bible is unique in its intellectually honesty. Its characters have real personalities. It portrays flaws of its writers and details failures along with successes.

Source:

Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, 1989. The Bible - God's Word or Man's? Brooklyn, NY, pp. 65-66.

Response:

  1. The Bible is far from unique in this regard. The Iliad and Odyssey depict the heroes as human, and even the gods have personalities and failures. The Mahabharata depicts failures of its heroes. In the African Mwindo Epic, a major part of the story is Mwindo's punishment after he achieved, and then overreached, his power (Biebuyck and Mateene 1971). Thor's weaknesses are the focus of part of The Prose Edda. Examples can be multiplied from all parts of the world. People prefer stories about real people, and real people are fallible, so that is what people write about.

Links:

Crane, G. (ed.), n.d. The Perseus digital library. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/

References:

  1. Biebuyck, Daniel and Kahombo C. Manteene, 1971. The Mwindo Epic, Berkeley: Univeristy of California Press.

Further Reading:

The Epic of Gilgamesh. Translations by Tigay or Gardiner are recommended.
Homer, The Iliad and The Odyssey. (Translations by Robert Fagles are excellent.)
Buck, William, 1973 and 1976, Mahabharata and Ramayana, University of California Press.
Sturluson, Snorri, The Prose Edda.
Lonnrot, Elias, Kalevala. A good prose translations is by Francis Peabody Magoun, Jr., Harvard U. Press.
Ford, Patrick K., 1977. The Mabinogi and Other Medieval Welsh Tales, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Tedlock, Dennis (transl.), 1985. Popol Vuh. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Miller, Lucien (ed.), 1994. South of the Clouds, Seattle: University of Washington Press. (Mythology and folklore of the minority cultures of Yunnan, China)
de Civrieux, Marc, transl. by David M. Guss, 1980. Watunna, An Orinoco Creation Cycle. San Francisco: North Point Press. (a creation cycle from tropical South America)
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created 2003-6-6