I’m in a discussion on fb with someone who was bashing the Bible and I said it is a wise and profound book. He replied something like this: “What part? Rape? Incest? Genocide?“ and he said that the Bible “just regurgitates beliefs and tenants from other religions.” How do I respond to that? And is the Bible stories copied from other religions?
Realistically there is most likely nothing you can say that will matter.
There are answers to all of that which that person could find and study if they actually cared, but they don't really want to know. They think they already know, and the vast majority of the time they have no interest in learning anything that contradicts them.
If you are troubled by the questions that is fine, there is nothing wrong with asking legitimate questions. The problem for most of those people is they have already made their mind up and they are only looking for things to justify what they already believe.
As I said, there are plenty of Christian thinkers and teachers who address those questions. All you'd have to do is search for them on Youtube or Google. Just make sure you are getting a good orthodox Christian source. I don't mean by this that it is wrong to listen to the other side, just make sure you don't ONLY listen to the other side.
Regarding the question "is the Bible stories copied from other religions?"
No. They are not.
I've been a student of history my whole adult life, and I've spent much of the last twenty years studying Christian history, theology, and philosophy etc.
Most of these claims are what amount to historical conspiracy theories. They have no real evidence. Often times they rely on evidence that is simply made up, they rely on ignoring evidence that contradicts them, and they rely on twisting and misrepresenting facts.
There are some things like this. Many, maybe even most, ancient mythologies have some kind of Flood story where the earth is flooded and only one or a few human survive.
Does this mean that the Bible story of the flood was copied from other religions? or does this mean that all of those ancient religions are talking about an even that really happened?
Another example is this... It was once argued that the idea of a god dying and rising again was a common motif of ancient middle eastern religions.
It was argued that Jesus was just another in this well established trope of ancient mythology.
However, as scholars began to get a hold of this in the 20th century, they began to realize that in pre-Christian mythology there were few if any dying and rising god myths. They were instead simply dying god myths and they didn't rise. The dying and rising god myths that do exist are all mystery cults from "late antiquity", after the time of Christ.
In other words, it is more likely that the resurrection of Jesus became such an important idea that pagans began adding it to their stories and mythologies, to compete with Christianity.
However, even if the idea of a dying and rising god predated Christianity, we believe that God built his truth into nature itself and as such there are prefigurements of the Gospel everywhere, they are virtually inescapable in nature itself. Thus it should be no surprise to us if pagans who were much more aware of nature than we moderns are, picked up bits of the truth and incorporated it into their beliefs. Also, it is widely believed in traditional / historic Christianity that God has always sent angels to inspire the truth among peoples, so if we find true beliefs in ancient cultures again, it is no surprise to us.
The key distinction is that they had mythology, we have historical fact. Theirs was stories and legends, ours happened in history.
