TonySinclair:
Stuff like this always cheeses me off. If you want to say you are a Jew or Christian who is too sophisticated to believe that there was actually a Flood, or an Exodus, or a conquest of Canaan led by Joshua, or a Solomonic empire that stretched from the Mediterranean to the Euphrates, great. The scholarly consensus today is that none of that actually occurred, but if you want to say that you still find it edifying or instructive for the “higher truths” these stories contain, knock yourself out. Same with Christians and the birth narratives and wonder tales of Jesus.
But don’t pretend it was never intended to be historical, and don’t pretend that the vast, vast majority of Christians and Jews didn’t take it as historical for thousands of years. That is simply false. I see it more and more from liberal Christians and Jews who don’t like the idea of their holy books looking ridiculous in the light of modern scientific, historical, and archaeological discoveries. But pretending that everybody knew all along that the Biblical narratives were just instructive allegories is not a tenable position.
Go ahead, cite St. Augustine. Yes, he quibbled about the meaning of a “day” in Genesis. But his writings clearly show that he had no doubt that young-earth creation, the Flood, the Exodus, and all the rest actually occurred. Yes, the Bible contains poetic passage, allegorical passages, parables, etc. Those are fairly obvious, but they have nothing to do with the historical narratives in the Bible that were accepted as true by 99% of Christians and Jews until relatively recently.
19th century Fundamentalism was not born when people decided to take the Bible literally. It was born when people decided not to stop taking the Bible literally.
In ancient and medieval times uneducated and illiterate people tended to take the bible literally, but educated people, and many of the greatest and most influential theologians didn’t.
Cross posted from this thread :