PAGAN INFLUENCES IN THE BIBLE

Despite what the Fundies/Baggers think about their inerrant book, many concepts in the Bible were derived from pagan mythology.  You may recall this passage from Ephesians which Glenn Beck used to stir up sheeple:

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

E.R. Dodds in Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety claims that these were derived from Babylonian planetary gods.

In the Old Testament, we have another example of pagan influence in the Book of Daniel:

 “Your Majesty looked, and there before you stood a large statue—an enormous, dazzling statue, awesome in appearance. ³² The head of the statue was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, ³³ its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay.

These four metals were used by Hesiod several hundred years before Daniel was written to describe the Four Ages of Man.