# Question about Matthew for Christians **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 23, 2014, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-matthew-for-christians/707984 "2014-12-23T02:26:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 83
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2014, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-matthew-for-christians/707984/83 "2014-12-27T03:05:49Z")
> [@TonySinclair](#): > > That’s just playing with words. As I said above, they didn’t frame the issue the way modern literalists do, because there was no opposition, except in scholarly (yet still pious) debates completely beyond their ken. It is not "playing with words to point out that you are framing the discussion in ways that people prior to the eighteenth century would not even have understood. > [@TonySinclair](#): > > Let’s skip the formal definition bullshit, and give me a straight answer: all through the Middle Ages, say from 500 AD to 1500 AD, what percentage of Christians do you claim did not believe that the world was created in six literal days, and that there was a Flood, and an Exodus, and that every story in the Gospels not clearly labelled a parable actually happened? What percentage of Christans do you claim noticed the kinds of issues raised in this thread and dismissed them as metaphors or allegories, rather than simply being unaware of them? The overwhelming majority almost certainly accepted them as true. However, they accepted them as true from the perspective of those eras that did not regard truth as a " literal" manifestation. They did not spend any energy attempting to reconcile the fact that Jesus went to Jerusalem every year in one Gospel while he only journeyed to that city one time in another Gospel. They did not spend any effort to reconcile Genesis 1, where humanity is created, male and female, at the end of creation against Genesis 2, where Adam is created first, then all the animals, then Eve. No religious preacher or writer attempted to purge the verses in Genesis that only had two of each animal entering the ark or the verses that described seven pairs of every clean animal. It was simply not relevant to their view of literature, whether as scripture, history, or biography. And despite your dodge, that was true for all the peoples in those locales, which is why we do not findd pagan debates as to whether Athena was sired by Zeus or Pallas. > [@Controversial encounters between law-enforcement and civilians - the omnibus thread](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread/700942/546): > > People like you make me wish I knew more about psychology. You’re obviously intelligent and educated, but when it comes to your religion (and only YOUR religion, because your brain is fully functional when it comes to the scriptures of other religions), your rationality is just somehow bypassed. I suspect that most of what you think you know about my beliefs is wrong. Note, for example, that in this discussion I have clearly made no efforts at special pleading for Judaism or Christianity. In fact, I have argued that the approaches to religious literature were the same among pagans, Jews, ànd Chritians and made no claim that my beliefs are superior to others and have actually compared Jewish and Christian belief on an exactly equal footing with ancient Greek belief. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-matthew-for-christians/707984)._