> Even Genesis has direct geographical references to it. It has directions.
Treating Genesis as a single book is insane. Its a collection of oral traditions. Multiple authours, genres, and hundreds of years separate each tale.
> geographical references to it. It has directions. Calling it a metaphor is moving the goalposts. Ad reductio Abrahamic religion is simply that god made whatever we can't understand.
Eden isn't a metaphor, its an allegory, using as its basis a common Mesopotamian myth, as was common at the time. Its origin lies in the story of Lilitu.
The directions to the Euphrates are in Babylonian and Egyptian myths too. It was an area considered symbolic of the spiritual world. You get similar directions to forests that never existed in Japanese myths.
And as a people, the Caananites, and their descendants, were incredibly symbolic. See Kabbalah's number system, and references to it throughout the Bible.
> The introduction of Yahweh to the Semetic religion was very visibly followed by a shift in personal names referencing El (eg Michael) to names referencing Yahweh.
Firstly, "Yahweh" was a best guess about an unspoken name that wasn't allowed to be written in complete form. We are fairly certain that guess was wrong, and the actual name was "Elohim". They're the same name, and yes, the same spelling. (We transliterate to English using sounds in this case).
El wasn't replaced, nor were his attributes. The Caananites set out to seize their promised land, backed by their warrior god.
> the thing called YHWH is a sole god.
Not to begin with, in Biblical record. Or commands such as:
> I am a jealous god, you will have no gods before me
Wouldn't make sense. Nor would the Caananites hospitality to those of the Ba'al religions.
The Biblical record shows this, and it doesn't undermine the record. The Psalms frequently reference belief in other gods.
The first reference to monotheism comes in the Davidic era, after Israel has been established, but it isn't entirely fixed, and instead is something that slowly took hold over a great deal of time.
Different scholars and theologians have different theories on the why of that.
> that alone massively undermines the bible.
I wasn't arguing for or against it. I was simply explaining a couple of documents in a large collection have different intended meaning than that which you gave it.
We don't simply lift out parts of Herodotus and think that we should take his mentions of Achilles literally.
The Bible is a collection of documents. The meaning ascribed to them doesn't exempt them from treating them as ancient documents.
I'm sure they seem insane to you, but no moreso than our ancient Greek records, or the Roman ones either.