I was reflecting that the more I come to see the bible as a collection of myths, fables and legends borrowed from different cultures and belief systems such as paganism, Egyptian folklore and so on, I began to see a parallel between my journey in understanding the bible and the story in the movie "Inception".
In that movie story, the people entered into a dream world, and then in that dream, they entered into another dream world, and again in that second dream, they entered yet into another dream world. After some time, it can be hard to tell what is reality and what is imagination. So similarly, in the bible, we see one fictional character (eg Moses) being mentioned by another person (eg Jesus), who turns out to be a fictional character who was mentioned by another person (eg Paul), who himself turns out to be fictional too. So I can see how this realisation can create a mini spiritual crisis for people (including myself) who have all along been taught that these characters are real, even as they came to grasp that these characters are merely archetypes borrowed from some other religions, fables and myths.
I was thinking that those people in the olden days thousands of years didn't have modern day conveniences such as computers and cars, so life was very slow-paced. No wonder they had a lot of time sitting around and telling stories, and comparing one's culture's stories with another culture's stories as they traveled and interacted and traded with one another, and they inevitably added and modified some elements from one another's stories, and formed new stories. I suppose that's how we have many religions containing a mixture of elements today, since they all borrowed some plots and characters from one another, and created their own characters' names and backgrounds.
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