Discussion: Are all fantasy books based off of the Bible?

The fantasy genre is one of many mysteries. One of which is ‘where the hell did they get that idea?’ With so many different types of fantasy stories, it’s hard not to wonder where the inspiration came from. For some fantasy novels, such as the Chronicles of Narnia, that source is clearly the Bible. However, others seem to have indirect Biblical references. So to you I pose this question: can all fantasy be traced back to the Bible?

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I don’t think so. Due to the outreach of the bible, there will obviously be some parallels with popular tropes in the fantasy genre, especially good vs. evil or a ‘chosen one’, but saying that every book is based off of the Bible is really discounting all the creative ingenuity author’s authors, especially if they themselves aren’t Christian.

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No, I think that there are a few, such as C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia series that will hold biblical elements and links. Such as Aslan representing Jesus and Jadis representing Satan. However, most fantasy books that I see and read hold little to no links with the bible. Another thing to remeber that while C.S. Lewis was an atheist in his earlier life he later became one of the greatest advocators for Christanity and I feel that it was reflected in his writing.

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Considering the Heroes’ Journey can be traced back to the bible, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that it had a lot of bearing on modern fantasy as a whole. Jesus’ (And Heracles’ in Greek stories) journey is retold again and again because it’s the ultimate type of motivational magical stories

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I dom’t think so. I don’t learn bible but I can definitely write fantasy!

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I think the bible itself can be tracked to other sources, so I definitely don’t believe that all fantasy tropes originated from the bible. Other completely different cultures also have their own creatures and stories which could easily lend themselves to their own fantasy tropes. However, the bible has had a tremendous impact and can’t be discounted so easily.

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I mean mary sue probably because if you think about it jesus was a mary sue

I don’t think so. Some may have specific links to the Bible, but I don’t think most are. There may be common ground and similarities in many, but for example, if someone was a follower of a very different religion and didn’t believe a word of what the Bible said and wrote a fantasy story, there may still be similarities but it wouldn’t have a base with the Bible. If I wrote a fantasy book, it would not be based on the Bible in any way. For the most part the Bible is just a collection of stories translated and changed time and time again anyway, so what difference does it make for a story to be comparable to the collection of stories that makes the Bible?

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No I think they’re not :eyes:

i don’t think they are
and i think… believing they can be is… well it’s a very christian-centric perspective, ignoring that other religions with other sacred texts (some of them older than the bible itself) exist and can be an influence to some fantasy stories. and it also ignores that fantasy stories existed before the bible itself.

as a literature student, a lot of my professors tend to talk about how “everything’s been written already” from different perspectives, so yeah, maybe some fantasy stories have similar aspects to the bible, but that doesn’t mean they’re affected by it, it just means humans, as members of a society, have some ways of thinking and can repeat stories even if they’ve never read it because of how those around them can affect their thoughts.

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