This is intended as a question coming out of curiosity to “regular/nonfundamental” Christians that do not interpret the Bible literally, like most Christians probably do.
My question is : if it’s not literal , what does it even mean then?
Lets take the story about Adam and Eve, eating the forbidden fruit etc. etc.
If you do not take this as literal fact. Then what? what exactly do you get from this story? What is the point?
If it never REALLY happened, And what are it’s applications? etc etc… And more broadly regarding the Bible…if a lot of it is just parables and work of “fiction”…What is the point?
This question is coming from a lack of understanding the mindset and out of serious curiosity, Im not interested in an argument about the existence of the Abrahamic God.
You’re presuming that there are literalists. Ned Flander’s protestation aside, do you really think it’s possible to genuinely believe that 1=0 and simultaneously 1=2?
What is really fascinating is asking people how they decide which bits to take literally and which are mere metaphor or require further interpretation.
I think this understanding is rather explicitly mentioned in the OP. The whole question has no point if the OP thought that all Christians are literalists.
Religious people are rather more serious about the points of the Bible than readers of fiction, including Harry Potter fans. The Iliad,. Odyssey, and Aesop’s Fables have points also, but people don’t gather once a week to read them and hear sermons about them.
This is exactly what frustrates me about the response to very reasonable questions like that in the OP. We get non-answers.
Look, if Jesus came to save us from the sin inherent in us because of the actions of Adam and Eve, and there was no Adam and Eve, what is the point. If we are bound by the covenant God made with Abraham, and there was no Abraham, what’s the point?
I think I’m going to found a new religion, Christo-Atheism. “There is no God, and Jesus is his Son.”
Yes indeed. I content that we are all moral atheists. We don’t decide on morality based on the Bible, we decide which parts of the Bible to accept based on our inherent morality.
From a non-literal POV it is a ancient parable that can be applied to humanity in any stage, it is timeless wisdom.
The rules for living are very simple, the first (and only for a while) commandment, be fruitful and multiply (from Gen 2 as God made man and woman - next verse). When A&E violate this very simple command everything goes to hell and we get the other 48 chapters of Genesis and all the other books of the Bible.
If Adam and Eve didn’t partake of the fruit the Bible would be 2 chapters long, Gen 1-2.
So Adam and Eve shows the typical stuff when humans don’t follow the rules of be fruitful and multiply. Eve is lured by the temptation of beauty, wisdom and food. This is the exact reason for many abortions, women believe the deception that not having to raise a child would mean more food for her, better chance of staying in school and she would be more attractive. The end result is more pain in child birth, submission to the male, and when children do come, problem children (such as Adam and Eve had Cain).
So the non-literal interpretation of scriptures are directly relative to today’s society. The are timeless issues of humanity.
Actually, it’s not that hard. Most sections of the Old Testament are pretty clearly myth/parable or history, and the two don’t neccessarily meet much, if at all. There’s a few other parts such as Psalms, as well. I contend the New Testament is historical fact, though sometimes it gets details wrong.
I agree. The moral of the story is that if you expect people who don’t know the difference between right and wrong to do right, you are a moron. God in Genesis is like a parent who sees his three-year old child playing near the edge of a cliff, tells him not to fall off, and goes back into the house to watch TV.
For non-literalist Christians (which is to say for most Christians) this isn’t a question which preoccupies us nearly as much as it seems to preoccupy some of the New Atheists.
It’s mostly not important whether a story is true or not; scripture is not a newspaper, and the significance of the stories it contains doesn’t often depend on whether they set out historical events, and set them out accurately. It might sometimes be interesting to know the answer to that question, but it mostly won’t affect the meaning or import of the scripture.
Was the Song of Solomon written by an actual lovesick couple about their actual relationship with one another? Probably not, but why would I care? Were the Psalms attributed to David actually written by David? I doubt it, but I don’t think my approach to them would be greatly altered if it somehow turned out that they were.
There are obviously some things whose historical reality, or lack of it, is of significance to Christians - the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the obvious example. But this is not typical.
It’s just very hard for rational people to understand how anyone can say he’s sure that that one story is true, but most of the others are probably false. And that he doesn’t care that most of the others are probably false.
While I agree that there are few if any (intelligent) literalists, there are tons of persons who claim to be literalists. One o fmy sisters has been known to, in the same conversation, say that every word in the King James Version of the Bible is literally true, and a moment later to say, “Oh, that part is just a parable.”
Not caring whether mythic stories are true or false seems perfectly rational to me. You haven’t offered me any reason why I should care. It doesn’t matter to me whether they are true or false; why would it? After all, the reason a story is mythic is precisely because it’s significance does not lie in its historicity.
And as for believing that some stories recorded in scripture are true, again, I don’t see anything fundamentally irrational about that. Scripture records the Maccabean revolt, for instance, and I don’t think anybody serious doubts that it was a historical event.
And, for the record, I don’t say that most of the stories in the bible are probably false. I say that it for most of the stories in the bible the degree of historicity doesn’t greatly matter. You seem to think that this is irrational, but you haven’t offered a rational argument as to why their historicity would matter.
I am not a biblical literalist, as understood by the OP.
I don’t believe in the bible, yet I do believe in Jesus Christ.
I suppose it would be pretty easy to logically prove that I am wrong, probably equally easy in either case.
I am not living my life according to logic. I am not living my life according to a book. I am trying to live my life according to the standard of perfect love. Of course, I could be wrong, I often am. I try anyway.
I find that being right is less satisfying to me than being loving. You might feel differently.
To be truly loving one must aspire to rightness. It would be wicked to not to call out a friend’s shortcomings and rather tolerate in fuzzy-wuzziness. The Bible, reason, and love are all one standard which are inseperable.
And yes it is my opinion the Bible should be taken literally although not hyper-literally like someone with Asperger’s would interpret it-the Bible uses idioms, hyperbole, parable, and so on and what is meant to be history must be read as such, what is meant to be proverbs must be read as proverbs.