A nexialist explanation of some of the classical and biblical stories

Lots of people have a vague feeling that the content of various old stories are more than just a good yarn written to make certain points. In fact, various poeple have managed (using the techniques pioneered by heinrich schliemann on homer's iliad) to demonstrate that at least some of the stories are actually oral history that has been writen down at a later date.

The story usually goes as follows:

1. The individual decides that the story is too convincing to be made up, and decides that it needs looking into further
2. They use the story to look for other evidence that it is more than just a story, inluding finding other versions of the same story, but told from other perspectives
3. They use the content of the story to trace it back to it's origin, and to reconstruct a model of the events described in that story
4. Having reconstructed a more acurate version or an earlier version of the story, they then continue doing steps 2 and 3 until they have a satisfactory explanation, looking for more evidence along the way

Other examples of this include noah's flood, the ten plagues of egypt, the destruction of sodom and gamorah, the search for troy and a number of others. In each case, it has started out in an identical manner, with someone thinking that the description was too good, and going from there to try and come up with a plausable, (usually) interdisciplinary explanation for the events.

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last modified 16:06 2006/03/08