I love history. Writing doesn't really pay the bills for me, I'm not a best selling author, so I make my living by teaching history. An essential part of studying history is to look at both primary and secondary texts. A primary text was written during the time period that is being studied verses a secondary text is written more recently about events that happened during the time period.
When reading and researching about certain primary texts, especially if they have spiritual themes, a common boast is that they are "Older than the Bible." In fact, some reviewers go on so much about how old the text is that they fail to even mention what is even in the text in the first place.
Are there texts that are older than the Bible? Certainly there are, in fact saying that something is older than the Bible isn't very impressive. What people forget about the Holy Bible is that it isn't technically a book. The word Bible means library, which is a collection of books. These books were written by several different authors living in several different time periods. The Holy Bible was not complied into it's present form until after AD 325 making the Bible itself less than 1700 years old. 1700 years ago is ancient by it's not very ancient. Many books from the Sumerians, Chinese, Indians (People from India, not Native Americans) Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Mayans, and other civilizations were written before that time.
(Other important questions to consider, how and why was the Bible complied the way that it is and what took so long?)
The age of the Bible is not as significant as the ages of the individual books in it. The five books of Moses or the Torah is the oldest part of the Bible. These books are the first five in the Old Testament. Are there books that are older than the Torah? Yes there are. The Epic of Gilgamesh is the oldest surviving literature in the world; it is a little less than 5000 years old. Moses was not even born for almost another 2000 years. Even so, the Torah being about 3400 years old is older than the vast majority of literature ever written.
So, why is age of spiritual texts important in the first place? To be first is an important concept with us humans. The ancient world was far more connected than most people realize. Being able to say that something was written first gives the document a sense of legitimacy. "Our religion thought of it first and you were influenced by us," is what many people are trying to claim when they say that something is older than the Bible. For some Christians this idea is deeply troubling and for others it is not.
Why does it bother some Jews and Christians that other cultures'
teachings may have influenced the Bible? For many people who have been
taught that the Bible was written by God, finding out that it was
written by men is hard to take. Then finding out that other men wrote
almost the same thing makes some people question their faith.
Why doesn't it bother many Jews and Christians that the Epic of Gilgamesh has a flood story that is similar to the account of Moses? Simply put, they have faith that Moses was a prophet. Moses wrote about the flood long after it happened, at the time the Epic of Gilgamesh was written it was practically a recent event. In fact most cultures have a story about the major flood, some of which are even more similar to Moses' account than the Epic of Gilgamesh. Did the flood actually happen? That is a matter of faith. Floods happen all over the world every year. It would truly be strange if there weren't flood disaster stories from all over the globe.
Even though there are many sources of literature that can claim that they are older than many of the books in the Bible, please do not forget to do your own research. (Yes, even double check me. You'll see that I've done a lot of rounding) Just because someone says a book is a certain age doesn't mean that the person isn't mistaken or lying. There is currently a movement within the dying sects of Zoroastrianism to prove that Zoroaster invented Monotheism, since being the first would give their religion more legitimacy and possibly save it. It has long been the tradition however that Zoroaster did not live until around 600 BC, making him about 600 - 700 years younger than Moses. In my opinion, trying to make Zoroaster more ancient instead of letting what he wrote speak for itself belittles what he had to say about God.
Another example is a text that I am currently reading, the Bhagavad - Gita is believed by many to be 5000 years old. I can say with absolute certainty that this book could not possibly be 5000 years old, there are too many references to cultural concepts that did not exist until much later. The book may have existed in some form, a radically different oral form perhaps, but it could not have been anything like it is now. Most historians tend to think that it is only 1500 years old, making it younger than the Bible. I am willing to estimate that it could be 2000 years old.
At the end of the day how much does the age of something matter? It is interesting to me to look at the age of something and marvel at its impact on the world and the fact that it has survived for us to read today. However, the age of spiritual text does not influence my spiritual beliefs. There are much more important things. The most important question would be, what does the text say about God?
