Tales of flood and divine wrath are encountered in all mythologies and sacred texts. Five thousand year old inscriptions on Sumerian tablets already tell about the efforts of a Noah-like hero to save humankind from extinction.

In ancient Egypt, the Book of the Dead, several millennia older than Christianity, already details the principle of final judgment. Also in Egypt, 1400 years before Christ, King Akhenaton creates a religion based on love, equality, and freedom. Its ideals are those of most subsequent monotheist faiths. The goddess Isis and her son Horus will even become the archetypes of the Madonna and her Infant.

In Persia, around 600 B.C., Zoroaster teaches that Earth once was a place of delight, a paradise. Following the fall of the angels, Mazda, the creator of all things, confronted the forces of evil. Mazdeism speaks of the savior to be miraculously born every thousand years from a virgin, of the punishment and reward of the souls, and of the existence of hell and heaven. Mithraism, a cult  widespread in the Roman empire during the first century B.C., promises universal salvation, and includes such rites as baptism and communion with consecrated bread and wine.

In India, the religious epic of the Mahabharata speaks of the many guises of the divine Vishnu. One of them is the God Krishna in which Vishnu incarnates to save the world. Like Christ, Krishna is born from a virgin in a stable. Like Christ, a cruel king seeks his death and for this does not hesitate to kill many children. Like Christ, young Krishna is brought to the temple where his knowledge baffles the priests.

Mohammed, akin to many founders of religions, receives the divine revelation through an angel. And like them too, he has to fight demons during his meditative retirement. Even figures as remote in time and space as Buddha and Christ, preach love and compassion in almost identical terms. Both take the same revolutionary stance in benevolence toward the destitute and the pariah.