Old Testament

The story in Daniel chapter 6 tells of Daniel being thrust into the role of second-in command of the entire empire, and of jealous men conspiring to have Daniel thrown into the den of lions, taking advantage of the well-known Persian code of morality, in which a promise can not be broken. It follows with a pious passage that can only be propaganda. Not only was Daniel a role model for the readers, by praying to his God in spite of the risk, his God was able to save him from the lions, just as God had previously saved the young men from the furnace in a quite similar context. The fact that the story even tells of the wrong Persian king who defeated the Babylonians (Darius, when it should have been Cyrus) is further proof, if any is needed, of the fictional nature of the story.

Jonah was in the whale three days and three nights.

Jonah 1:17

"Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights."

Haran was the city of the moon-god Sin and Nahor means "Light or lamp", suggestive of the moon, but is also the name of the Abraham's brother. As many of the family had names closely associated with the moon, the family of the Hebrew patriarchs were, at the very least, devout followers of the moon god.

Another Answer:

In Genesis 24:10, it says Isaac was sent to the Mesopotamian cith of Nahor. He did not want to mix the now called line of his descendants to those of the unrighteous peoples of Canaan. He was following God's promise.

The son of Saul, the first king of Israel, was Jonathan(Isaiah 14:1).

There is no record that Saul of Tarsus in the New Testament (aka the apostle Paul) had a literal son, though he refers to Timothy as "my own son in the faith" in 1 Timothy 1:2 (KJV), and to Titus as "mine own son after the common faith" in Titus 1:4 (also KJV. The New King James replaces "my own" with "a true").

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There are two biblical narratives that tell of Solomon's succession to David. The first narrative, in 1 Kings, is somewhat muddled and ends with David, on his deathbed choosing Solomon to be his successor. The second narrative is in 1 Chronicles, which was a later rewrite of the Book of Kings and other books in the Deuteronomic history. Possibly recognising the problems inherent in the account in 1 Kings, the Chronicler simply has David, while still healthy and active, announce that God has chosen Solomon as his heir.

Since Solomon had older brothers, it was not anticipated in the 1 Kings story that Solomon would ever be king, until David was near death, so there was no reason for David to prepare him to be king. The story in 1 Chronicles is more flexible, since David had some time, perhaps years, to prepare Solomon to be king, before his own death.

Whereas in the second creation story (beginning at Genesis 2:4b), God's powers are somewhat limited and he can not make living creatures out of nothing, requiring dirt to create Adam and the beasts of the earth, the first creation story (Genesis 1:1-2:4a) portrays God as almost omnipotent, able simply to speak things into existence. This account is credited to the Priestly Source and is much later in Judaism than the second account. it is consistent with the Priestly Source's frequent use of the term El Shaddai ('God Almighty') to refer to his God.

In the first creation account, God is remote and impersonal, again consistent with the Priestly Source's view of God. He makes man in his own image, blesses them and gives them instructions to multiply and have dominion over the earth, but does not show the close personal interest that we see in the second account.

For more information, please visit: http://christianity.answers.com/theology/the-story-of-creation

After asking for a sign to make sure God would aid him, he obeyed God, destroying an idolatrous altar and gathering an army to fight the Midianites (Judges ch.6-7). He was called Yerubaal, alluding to his having destroyed the idolatrous altar of baal (Judges 6:31-32). See also:

Monotheism in Judaism

Genesis 12:1

The LORD had said to Abram, "Go from your country, your people and your father's household to the land I will show you.

The archaeological evidence against the historicity of the Israelite conquest is well established. Jericho had been abandoned around 1550 BCE, long before the time attributed to Joshua. By 1400 BCE, there seems to have been a small, unwalled village on the site of the former city, but nothing a great military leader would bother conquering. The second city to be conquered in the Book of Joshua is Ai, which archaeologists say was also abandoned and in ruins long before this time. Ai means 'Ruins' in Hebrew, indicating that the Israelites never knew the real name of the city and simply knew it as the 'ruins', a state that they thought must have come about because of their own conquest of the town.

So why does the Bible make these claims of extremely long lives? First, some other early Near Eastern cultures make even more extreme claims, with some ancestors living thousands of years, but these claims are always in a religious context and are never believed today. Only Hebrew claims, likewise made in a religious context, are ever accepted by modern laypeople, but certainly not by serious biblical scholars.

Second, it appears that the biblical records of longevity are more related to numerology than to historical facts. One of the most important numbers in ancient Hebrew numerology is the number 17. Most of the lifespans in the Genesis genealogies involve this number, for example the Patriarchs:

1. Abraham lived to 175 (5 X 5 X 7)
2. Isaac lived to 180 (6 X 6 X 5)
3. Jacob lived to 147 (7 X 7 X 3)

Here we can see:

• Each lifespan involves a perfect square (5, 6, then 7 in a numeric series),
• the third factor also forms a series (7, 5, 3)
• in each case the sum of the factors is 17.

Joseph, favoured son of Jacob, is sometimes referred to as the fourth patriarch, and his 110 years are the sum of these consecutive square numbers (110 = 52 +62 + 72). Interestingly, the first man in Genesis, Adam, has a life span of 930 years, (= 302 + 30), and the last man in Genesis, Joseph, has a life span of 110 years (= 102 + 10). And Adam's lifespan can also be related to his immediate descendants by another series containing the number 17.

It is hardly likely that these precise ages may be explained as simple coincidence. And if they were not coincidences, then they were nominated by the early story-tellersbecause of a spiritual fascination with numbers.