I am not denying that the Samarians had these customs and traditions. In fact, cultures around the world that were completely separated have similar stories. What my point is that the Samarians and other civilizations got their traditions from earlier peoples that past them down.
You know by saying this you actually end up in disagreement with the bible. Hopefully you now see why and how it happens - especially when you start taking an interest in ancient history.
According to the biblical accounts, there wouldn't have been anyone before the Sumerians. Yhwh created everything starting with the Garden of Eden in Sumeria - and everything arose
from there.
Of course, history knows better than that, but although there might have been a few 'settlements' of people before the Sumerians in the area, they still wouldn't have been jewish, and any story passed down from them would have been heard by the Sumerians first and as such would be more accurate an account - The Sumerians were, from what we know, the first to write it down.
As a result, are we now talking about many gods or just one god? The evidence would suggest many. We can see how the jewish culture adapted multiple gods into one god with the early use of elohim, (gods). You will see many references to multiple gods instead of one in those early parts of genesis, such as:
Gen 1:26 "Let us make man in
our image,
our likeness"
Gen 11:7 "Come, let
us go down and confuse their language.."
Gen 3:22 "And the lord god said, "The man has now become like
one of us, knowing good and evil."
Both Judaism and christianity come from this source, and as time passes new adaptations are made. It is the way it works. These later adaptations would include the book of mormon, Koresh's texts, the quran and so on.
Quite interesting to note that the father of the jews was a Sumerian and the father of christianity was a jew. It's all about identity change, and yet the only way they could do that in written form would be to incorporate stories they had known since their childhood into their own modified version.
How do you explain so many cultures having such similar traditions even though they were continents and oceans apart from each other without any way of communicating? How do you explain ancient cavitations in the American Continent building Pyramids and Temples similar to the ones in Egypt?
We could also question how the Egyptians built pyramids - There were step pyramids in Sumeria. But there are several possibilities that need to be looked at.
1) An early trade route: It might seem unlikely given the time, but spend some time researching into the 'cocaine mummies'. There would have been nowhere else on the planet for Egyptians to get hold of cocaine other than the Americas, and so unless they flew over in UFO's, somekind of trade route can't really be doubted.
2) Similar abilities yield similar products. It is feasible to consider that cultures at similar stages of progression would make things that appear similar to that of other cultures.
There are accounts of the flood in ancient Mayan and Aztec art. How do you explain that unless there is some truth to it?
The problem with 'floods' is that they're a regular occurence, (and even more so without our technology in place to limit them). Thousands of years ago floods would have been dime a dozen, and generally vastly over-inflated by the story tellers of the time. In general no connections can be made between the biblical flood and the floods of other cultures - aside from the Sumerian Utnapishtim version, which not only predates the biblical version, but has many parts that are practically word for word.
Were did all these stories originate from?
History is quite appealing isn't it?
Current knowledge of that region would point at the Sumerians, but yhwh is not what people want him to be. He is an adaptation of earlier stories, a collection of ideas and gods melded into one being that suited the new jewish culture, and the much later arrival of jesus is just an extension of that.
That is the way it is. I couldn't express enough what you're really missing out on. There is an entire world out there with history and beauty. Being able to see it and learn about it is worth the eventual eternal oblivion that we all face. Admittedly we don't really get enough time to learn and see all we would like to, but nowadays it seems most are content to miss everything, instead just hoping they get another try once they're dead. It is all for nought.
Take care.
P.S Sorry Neildo