[jajko]

We only know about oral story/stories that survived, no idea how many got lost forever since last knowing person died very long time ago. With writing/stone tablets, there is still some hope for the future to find more.

Also, all history since evolution of man before stone tablets and similar was oral, and we have very very little that persisted till now with 0 chance of new discoveries. Much more persisted in written form, and its coming from much shorter timespan. Also, massive room for accidental or intentional distortion and even eventual complete loss of original content in oral history.

I'd say most modern religions fall into this, they literally copy&pasted each other with rather small changes (which were then thrown out of proportions by fanatical followers), typical most famous one is zoroastroanism -> judaism -> christianity -> islam -> bahai and of course each node has tons of sects which mix with the others also on other levels in various ways. And each claims they are the only valid eternal truth and word of God... with at best mild tolerance towards every other offshoot.

Its funny in worst way possible to meet religious fanatics from any of those, rational debate is simply impossible and they only look for quick mental exits from any sort of critical thinking and introspection. I am firmly convinced that reading properly original stuff that that ended up as the book we call Bible would make quite a few people these days leave the religion.

For me its not even comparable.