I do not want to start any sort of war of words here. Of course, that me be impossible considering the nature of my question.
Why is the Bible considered the literal truth?
That is, why aren’t stories such as the Garden of Eden and the Flood of Noah considered as metaphorical, but as the actual truth?
Is there documentation in the Bible that says these stories are to be considered truth, as opposed to metaphors? Or is it just tradition?
Of course, from the way I phrased my questions, you can guess I view these stories as metaphorical. But I want to know why they would be considered truth. Actual arguments to the fact, not just that’s the way they’ve always been told. I mean, that’s the way they’ve always been told to me, and I admit freely I may be missing out on a large portion.
I don’t mean such things as the literal truth of Jesus’ existence, I mean the more fantastic don’t-happen-in-regular-life stories such as Shadrach, Meschach and Abednego or the Book of Revelations.
I would like to stress that though I may be an unbeliever, I would like to understand another point of view.
Some literalists on another board seem to be fond of this syllogism: (1) if one part is fiction, it must all be fiction, (2) Jesus saves is true, ergo (3) it is all true (since another way of reading (1) is that if any part is true it must all be true). But, of course, (1) is false.
A more reasonable approach is a literary one. E.g., in the case of Genesis, it doesn’t read like it was intended as allegory or mythology. So-and-so begat so-and-so2, and died. So-and-so2 lived 130 years and begat so-and-so3, etc. There is a certain precision to the writing style that begs to be interpreted literally.
The reasons for interpreting other parts non-literally are textual indicators like “Jesus told a parable” (q.v. the Gospels), “I saw, as it were, flaming tongues of fire” (check out various prophetical books), “I am the vine and you are the branches”. This last: since we are manifestly not branches and Jesus is manifestly not a vine, Jesus was using a metaphor.
A book like Genesis or Job or Exodus uses none of those cues. A literalists motto, therefore, would be “where no cues exist, interpret literally.”
But, please recall the first sentence of this post. Thanks.
There are quotes that some believers point to within the Bible itself to support this proposition (notably II Timothy 3:16) but this is really circular reasoning (and the quotation from Timothy does not really define what does or does not constitute “scripture” anyway) so it’s not exactly convincing to anyone who doesn’t already believe it.
Biblical literalism is a denominational/ sectarian position rather than a universal Christian doctrine. The majority of Christian teaching tends towards the idea that the Bible is inspired by God but that it’s not necessarily literally true or even inerrant.
Why do so many people believe in a literal interprettaion of the Bible? They believe it because they believe it. It’s not a position that anyone is reasoned into, it’s usually just something that they’re indoctrinated into.
I think some people cling to it because they think that if they let go of the idea of the Bible as the perfect word of God then they have to let go of God.
Well, as an Orthodox Jew, I’ll tell you the reason we consider it (at least the Old Testament) to be so: Short version: It was revealed directly by G-d at Sinai, in full view of the entire Israelite nation.
Longer version: In truth, only the Ten Commandments were actually spoken by G-d to the entire nation, but it was at the nation’s own request that G-d not speak anything more directly to them and that they consider Moses to be trustworthy enough that what he says in G-d’s name will be believed.
We have an unbroken line of tradition from the time of Moses to modern times regarding the contents, word for word, of the Bible. The original Israelites received copies of the text written by Moses himself, and were admonished by him and by leaders of every subsequent generation to disseminate its contents so that it will be well-known.
Post-Mosaic books were written by genuine prophets whose prophetic abilities were accepted as genuine by the contenporary Israelites as per guidelines dictated by…you guessed it…Moses.
So the bottom line: We believe it because it’s the word of G-d, preposterous though some of those stories might be from the perspective of one who’s never witnessed a miracle. Our ancestors passed down, en masse, their personal experiences thereof from generation to generation, both orally and in writing, so we believe that this testimony is convincing enough for us to believe even in the absence of modern evidence for supernatural miraculous occurrences.
Really? In what context, within Protestantism? Certainly Jews have been literalists (granted, there’s an oral tradition associated with the Biblical text, but even that oral tradition has its basis in the text) since the Bible was written and as far as I know the Catholic Church is literalist as well.
In Judaism, at least, it’s Biblical non-literalism that dates only from the 1800s. Even the Sadducees and the Karaites considered themselves to be literalists…they just rejected the Rabbinic oral tradition as a tool for Biblical interpretation.
The Catholic Church is not literalist. I attended Catholic schools for 13 years and we were taught all about the latest Biblical scholarship, and the theories of the sources (Elohist, Priestly, and some other one) used for the Old Testament, as well as the current theories on the authorship of books in the New Testament. The Church doesn’t come right out and endorse evolution (which would seem to be precluded by literalism), but it does state that a belief that life evolved is not inconsistent with Catholic belief, as long as it’s granted that at some point, God gave souls to early humans/near-humans.
cmkeller, is there any wiggle room for literalness in Orthodox Jewery? Hmmmm, I think I just made up a few words there.
If G-d was explaining to His people through Moses, would he go into explicit detail about such things as creation? I don’t see explaining to an ancient nomadic tribe “Well, in the first 4.3 billion years I just kind of let things swirl around, it was a nice light show and all, but then I decided to do a bit more. So for the next 1.2 billion years…” Is there room to believe that G-d was conveying to these simple people (as all people were back then) stories in their simplist terms so that their meaning rather than their literalness came through?
What’s more important, to know that G-d created the universe in 7 days or in 70 billion years, or simply that G-d created the universe?
I can’t say it’s never been literalist, Guin. The whole debacle with Galileo and Copernicus was inspired on the Church’s part by a literal reading of the Bible. It was inspired more by an intense desire to keep control of the debate from passing into the hands of those pesky scientists that started cropping up in that era, but that’s another thread…
Cowbell, don’t worry about Jew(e)ry. It’s a very old word, referring to the whole of the Jewish people, or to the area that used to be called (at the time “Jewry” was extant in general conversation) Palestine. It’s even in a Christmas carol (“In Bethlehem, in Jewry, our precious savior wakes”). I don’t know offhand whether it’s considered offensive to Jews currently, though…
So they don’t believe that the world was created in 6 days, all air-breathing life except Noah and family and breeding pairs aboard the Ark perished in a great flood some 4000+ years ago, the Israelites were freed from slavery in Egypt and escaped pursuit by same across a path in the dried-up Sea of Reeds by miracles, etc?
Perhaps I am misunderstanding what “literalist” means?
Tinker Grey:
I’m not sure. How exactly do you mean this distinction?
For example, in Judaism, there is interpretation that would seem to run counter to literal truth. “An eye for an eye” is considered, for example, to be referring to monetary renumeration rather than an actual maiming of someone who maims someone else. However, this re-interpretation is itself based on the verse “just as he put the blemish into a man, so shall be done to him.” Since not all people have equivalent body parts of actual equal value (e.g., what if an already-blind man blinds a sighted person), the literal “eye for an eye” wouldn’t fulfill this latter verse…it wouldn’t be “just as.” So while it appears that the interpretation of the first verse is non-literal, it’s actually an ultra-literal reading of the entire context.
So…could you please clarify what you mean as literal truth vs. literal interpretation?
More Cowbell:
While there is some wiggle room regarding the actual creation story, there’s way too much extraneous detail to make the whole thing - or even the most preposterous-sounding parts - complete metaphor that can otherwise condense to “G-d created everything.” Just as one example - even if there’s room to say that the first six days of creation lasted for several billion years, the following chapters quite explicitly describe a time line which, when calculated, say that mankind has only existed for 5764 years, or the flood story.
And just out of curiosity, why the heck wouldn’t an ancient nomadic tribe be capable of understanding a billions-years creation? The amount of time is simply a detail; to be more correctly aligned with modern scientific understanding would only require more accurate numbers, not a detailed description of astrophysics or genetics.
The RCC does not endorse a literal belief in the creation story or the flood but does believe the Exodus was historical. It’s not all or nothing. Some things the Church takes as literal, others as allegorical. Absolute and inerrant Biblical literalism is rather new to Christianity and is a minority view.
So how does Orthodoz Judaism reconcile the last two beliefs with the empirical evidence which refutes them?
Well, yeah, there was that. But even so, it wasn’t an exact literal point of view.
cmkeller, Catholics are taught that the Bible is NOT to be interpreted literally-I was always warned against this in school. (I went to Catholic school, btw).
Basically, the meaning of the stories in the Bible are more important than whether or not they actually happened exactly.
The most common argument for literality (or at least total face-value veracity) of the bible goes along the lines of:
“If we can’t be sure that the Bible is utterly true about X, then how can we be sure that it is correct on any matter?”
So; “If the Bible is wrong about the Earth being created in six days, then how can we be sure that Jesus died for our sins?”
I don’t like it because it it assumes that the Bible is a single document of uniform veracity and it serves wishful thinking, rather than the open-minded pursuit of truth.
I dunno. If we were talking about a biography of, say, Ghandi or Confucious, I would agree that (a) it is very likely that the book may have errors and misquotes, and (b) that these errors don’t invalidate the parts that are true.
However, when you’re talking about the purported word of God, the omniscient and omnipotent creator of the universe who has said that unless you follow his words exactly you will burn forever in a lake of fire, well, in THAT case I think we don’t have the luxury of deciding what parts of the Bible God really said, and which parts he really meant, and which parts we really need to follow. Heck, with all that’s riding on it (eternal salvation and all), I can’t imagine God allowing his words to become so full of errors that we would need to discard 90% of it.
So yes, I think acceptance of the Bible is an all or nothing proposition. I, of course, went the “nothing” route after careful consideration, but that’s just me.
I don’t imagine most theists (and I don’t know your particular beliefs, so don’t let me put words in your mouth) would like having to accept the entire bible, warts and all, as a uniformly credible source book. After all, there are just too many whoppers to be found in there for all but the most ardently eyes-glazed-over literalists to accept across the board. But it does seem awfully convenient to have the luxury of cherry-picking the good stuff out, chucking the rest, and acting like one is “following God’s word.”
I don’t know why any god would be such a poor communicator that 2,000 years later, we still don’t agree on what the hell was even said, or meant, in a book of that critical importance, but, hey, to each his own. It’s just comical to me that Christianity can’t even reach a consensus among it’s own ranks, yet alone among other faiths.
Quite right, in fact, it is more of a case of “If we can’t be sure that our interpretation of what the Bible says about X is utterly true, then how can we be sure that the other stuff we have picked out and interpreted is correct?”
But even so, it wasn’t an exact literal point of view.