In my view, the major difference between Aesop's Fables and the Bible is the violence. The Bible being much more violent than the Greek fables. Another difference, the fables are actually a pretty good code to live by. The Bible not so much. After all, it's probably not a good idea to beat your slave and murder your child.
One must ask though. Why is one accepted as fiction while the other is considered sacred text handed down by God?
Whenever I am bored I scroll thru the philosophy section.
I am bored. So I have found this thread and would like to give it some thought and commentary.
First regarding Aesopos -- he is reputed to have been a Greek slave who lived around 620 BCE and who composed a number of fables at a time when there was no way to write anything down in Greece. Literacy came much later to the Greeks than it did to Egypt, as we know from Josephus Flavius. Herodotus and Aristotle both refer to Aesop, but this does not prove that he ever really existed. The fables themselves may simply have consisted of local folk literature intended to entertain children.
Thus I would equate Aesop with such legendary figures as King Arthur, Remus, Romulus, or Heracles.
Aesop's works are entertaining, as is the earlier Odyssey. Either one of these could have originated in bardic tales orally transmitted and then finally written down in later times.
Moses (Moshe) on the other hand was literate, and according to Josephus, became a prince of Egypt and an accomplished general of all the Egyptian armies. So that's the first big difference between them -- that one had to be at best an illiterate bard while the other was educated and trained in literacy, law and warfare.
Moses begins his own narrative at some point between 1450 BCE (roughly the same time as archaeology tells us that Troy was burned and destroyed) and perhaps 1410 BCE shortly before he died. The laws of JHVH, Moses' God, are extremely complex, and therefore it would make sense that he wrote these down as he "received" them. Thus the detail that was passed down from generation to generation by scribes after Moses is completely feasible from a literary standpoint.
As a work of religious law, Moses' Law and the compilations that follow it compares favorably with the Hindu ancient texts, and nothing else on this Earth equals either one of them.
Certainly the compilation is violent, since its major theme is the conquest of a land already occupied by other ethnic nations. That is similar to the American conquest of the West by the U.S. Cavalry, or the Spanish conquest of Latin America earlier. That's never pretty when it happens, and it has happened over and over throughout history and prehistory.
Sure, a goodly number of exaggerations crept into the Old Testament Bible thereafter, like the story of the talking donkey, or the 3 guys walking around in the furnace. Those characterize the entertainment value of the literature itself, possibly codified for children.
Never in all of history has a document like the Hebrew Old Testament been formulated with as much rich and realistic detail as its books/scrolls contain. The Hebrews and Jews (a subset of the whole group) went to great lengths to preserve their secular and religious history.
Comparing Aesop and Moses is really a bad comparison made by a rather unscholarly mind who has only superficially examined either of them rather flippantly. So I hope you don't expect to have been taken seriously. If this is a joke then it is funny-sad rather than funny-ha-ha.
oke
