Abandon posted:

You can get a disturbing amount of mileage out of the idea that the old testament started as an oral tradition that originated from a visit by aliens. Genesis has got weird creatures living on the earth (who eventually all disappear) and mating with the locals. You've got really weird things coming out of the sky, and angels telling us that a certain number of people are going to be saved (because the ship is only so big). Imagine you were an alien race and you wanted to come and get some creatures from the earth to rescue them from some violent event coming their way that they're too primitive to even comprehend. But you're a galactic civilisation so the time it will take for your ship to actually arrive is on the scale of thousands of years, so you want to deliver a message to whoever is going to be around when you come back. You do it by picking the toughest looking tribe of savages around and