"Plato meets Moses" speculation is just fun, though. Since Plato was a monotheist I think he would have found enough common ground to debate with Moses. I expect the two would have disagreed on whether the forms were in God or residing elsewhere. The creation account in Genesis and in Timaeus are both geocentric accounts of an initially perfect creation, etc. They also would have agreed that the homogenous mixture of the elements was the same as the homogenous "formless and void," "surface of the waters" etc., but they definitely would have disagreed about the demiurge vs God/Satan, and also disagreed about quite a lot of what happened after creation. That's my speculation, anyway.
I'm assuming that we apply Ockham's Razor. That it's a collection of myths predating science is easier to uphold than the idea that every single Biblical author was steeped in magical realism.
Most of the genius in the Bible comes from outside of it: from the critics and commentators. In a way it's a triumph of brilliant minds over mediocre source material. But now we don't need to apply genius to myths, we can apply them to the real world. I rather prefer that.
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2085298,00.ht...
The Big Bang.
Look, the Bible is an anthology of twisted fairytales that's been an absolute bonanza of story fuel for the western tradition. But it's not exactly replete with reliable scientific information.
Meanwhile, explicating the meaning and purpose of the Ten Commandments in all the thousands of odd corner cases -- including big ones like war -- are left as an exercise for the reader.
Wow have we gotten off-topic. Sorry HNers.
1:2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
1:3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
Oops, there's water before there's light. Better retcon that sucker.