# question to non-literal Christans regarding understanding the Bible **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 28, 2011, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-to-non-literal-christans-regarding-understanding-the-bible/597941 "2011-09-28T23:05:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2011, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-to-non-literal-christans-regarding-understanding-the-bible/597941/61 "2011-09-29T14:29:19Z")
> [@LonesomePolecat](#): > > Interesting how so many atheists on the SDMB argue as though the most extreme fundamentalists and biblical literalists in the United States are somehow representative of Christianity as a whole. Until all the moderate Christians get some backbone and take Mr. Microphone away from the extreme fundamentalists and biblical literalists, to the rest of the world they _do_ represent Christianity as a whole. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2011, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-to-non-literal-christans-regarding-understanding-the-bible/597941/62 "2011-09-29T14:53:02Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > I don’t ever recall anyone attempting to burn Augustine of Hippo at the stake. In fact, prior ot the writings of Thomas Aquinas, nearly all of church theology was based on the works of John Chrysostym, Irenaeus, and Augustine. > > [Here is what he said](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo#Natural_knowledge_and_biblical_interpretation) about taking the stories of Genesis literally in chapter 19 of his work “_De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim_”:. Basically what he is saying there is that if christians don’t concede ground on the obviously wrong stuff in the bible it’ll raise doubts and suspicion about the rest of the supernatural fuzzy stuff. Sounds like arse-covering and face-saving to me. I’d suggest a more rational response would be to say, a lot of the bible is wrong, how can we trust the rest of it? ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2011, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-to-non-literal-christans-regarding-understanding-the-bible/597941/63 "2011-09-29T15:31:20Z")
> [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > I’d suggest a more rational response would be to say, a lot of the bible is wrong, how can we trust the rest of it? If the book is intended as non-fiction, and some of it is incorrect, then the whole thing can be doubted. But if it’s intended as fiction, then some of it can be incorrect, without the value of the whole thing being doubted. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2011, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-to-non-literal-christans-regarding-understanding-the-bible/597941/64 "2011-09-29T15:41:39Z")
> [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > I’m left no wiser on how you view the authority of the Bible, So I’ll ask some straightforward questions that typically get sidestepped or hand-waved away. Perhaps you’ll oblige with some straight answers. > > Is any of the Bible the actual word of God? > > If so, how do you know? > > Is anything in Bible meant to be taken literally? The Commandments perhaps? > > If so how do you know? These are two separate issues, to the extent that the first may well be off-topic for this thread. The authority of the Bible, and whether/in what sense/to what extent it is inspired by God or is the “word of God” is one question. The way in which the Bible is meant to be understood (as history, as allegory, as myth, as parable, as poetry, etc.) is another; and a person’s answer to the first question need not determine their answer to the second. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2011, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-to-non-literal-christans-regarding-understanding-the-bible/597941/65 "2011-09-29T15:46:05Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > If the book is intended as non-fiction, and some of it is incorrect, then the whole thing can be doubted. > > But if it’s intended as fiction, then some of it can be incorrect, without the value of the whole thing being doubted. When written was it intended as fiction or non-fiction, both as a whole and its constituent parts? What you say is true but doesn’t move the discussion forward. ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2011, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-to-non-literal-christans-regarding-understanding-the-bible/597941/66 "2011-09-29T15:47:39Z")
> [@LonesomePolecat](#): > > Hmm. I’m wondering how well you would survive in the world of those “ignorant bronze-age men.” You got me. I don’t have generations of knowledge passed on to me about how to live in a shitty desert. I’m not saying those people were stupid. However, they lived in a swirling mist of misinformation. Functionally, this doesn’t mean they were hampered very much day to day. If you think your wife is filthy during her menstruation, and banish her to a bleeding hut, you aren’t going to destroy your society. You’re just making life worse for everyone involved because of that particular nugget of ignorance. Multiply that by all the nuggets those people had in their ignorance baskets and you’ve got a shitty existence. ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2011, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-to-non-literal-christans-regarding-understanding-the-bible/597941/67 "2011-09-29T15:50:24Z")
> [@UDS](#): > > You keep inventing positions and attributing them to me. I have never insisted - I have never even _hinted_ that some part of the text is “magic”. No part of the text is magic. > > Look, in this thread **scamartistry** is asking for the perspective of mainstream, non-literalist Christians. I am attempting to offer such a perspective. You keep rejecting my position because it doesn’t reflect a literalist perspective. You cannot accept that I am not a literalist, and do not share literalist perspectives. (And, I see, **scamartistry** can’t either.) > > Given that the thread actively seeks non-literalist perspectives, why do you have such trouble engaging with those that are offered? You seem to be operating from a mindset that thinks that non-literalist Christians are, if they’re _really_ honest, simplistic literalists, and you simply reject any position which is inconsistent with that mindset. > > When you said earlier you didn’t think you had any rational argument that could appeal to me, you were right. You can frame no argument that can appeal to me because your irrational preconception that I am a secret literalist prevents you from addressing anything I say. You have to reframe it in literalist terms, and then attack the straw man you have created. While this may be reassuring for you, it’s getting boring for me. You said that the bible was divinely inspired. That doesn’t equate to some part of it being magic? So do you think the bible is simply a collection of writings of bronze age men with no supernatural significance at all? That’s not mainstream Christian thought. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2011, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-to-non-literal-christans-regarding-understanding-the-bible/597941/68 "2011-09-29T15:50:53Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > These are two separate issues, to the extent that the first may well be off-topic for this thread. > > The authority of the Bible, and whether/in what sense/to what extent it is inspired by God or is the “word of God” is one question. The way in which the Bible is meant to be understood (as history, as allegory, as myth, as parable, as poetry, etc.) is another; and a person’s answer to the first question need not determine their answer to the second. That was the reason I asked separate questions and left a gap between them. Do you want to give an answer to the questions? ---
**Author:** ![sciurophobic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cab0a1/32.png) [@sciurophobic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sciurophobic)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2011, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-to-non-literal-christans-regarding-understanding-the-bible/597941/69 "2011-09-29T16:08:47Z")
> [@brocks](#): > > For thousands of years, the first book of Genesis was _obviously_ meant to be taken literally. No, it wasn’t. Origen, one of the earliest Christian theologians, thought it was clearly an allegory. [Biblical Literalism a Modern Invention?](http://jesseturri.com/wordpress/?p=1693) ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2011, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-to-non-literal-christans-regarding-understanding-the-bible/597941/70 "2011-09-29T16:18:11Z")
> [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > When written was it intended as fiction or non-fiction, both as a whole and its constituent parts? > > What you say is true but doesn’t move the discussion forward. It moves the discussion forward because it refutes your claim that “the” rational thing to say is “If parts of it are wrong, the whole thing is untrustworthy.” It’s an interesting question how literally it was originally intended to be taken (I doubt it was intended originally to be taken literally but I don’t know how to argue for that) but I don’t think we need to ask how it was originally intended. Rather, what’s important is how it is now intended by those who continue to read it seriously or promulgate it as an important work. ---
**Author:** ![C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b2d939/32.png) [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C_K_Dexter_Haven)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2011, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-to-non-literal-christans-regarding-understanding-the-bible/597941/71 "2011-09-29T16:22:20Z")
Not a Christian, so not getting into this debate, but the “knowledge of good and evil” in the original ancient Hebrew is used in much the same way we would say “from soup to nuts” or “from A to Z” to mean “everything.” As allegory or metaphor, the story includes lots of “lessons” including: - that paradise (utopian existence) is possible, but that we have to work for it - that pursuit of knowledge is what makes us human (Some interpretations are that God isn’t REALLY angry at Adam and Eve for disobeying, that His plan all along is that we be human – questioning, inquiring, learning.) ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2011, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-to-non-literal-christans-regarding-understanding-the-bible/597941/72 "2011-09-29T16:24:56Z")
> [@UDS](#): > > Fair enough. Which would mean that people with access to better scientific knowledge would not treat the bible as an authority on scientific matters. Which we don’t. Which is rational. Which rather refutes the point that **Lobohan** was trying to make. There are plenty of people who treat the Bible as an authority on scientific matters. They’re call “creationists.” Actually I tend to call them flipping idiots. ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2011, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-to-non-literal-christans-regarding-understanding-the-bible/597941/73 "2011-09-29T16:35:51Z")
To answer the OP, without reading the rest of the thread to color my response, here is how I, as a not necessarily literal Christian look at things. I simply accept that some things were written to have a meaning, and were not meant to describe real events. Sometimes it’s the meaning of a story that’s important. For me the best example is the Flood story. Some non-believers point out that many cultures had a Flood story, and that makes them fictional and silly and not to be believed. I cheerfully acknowledge their attitude and explain that the Flood story as it appears in Scripture was written to differentiate the Hebrews/Isrealite story from, especially, the Babylonian one. At the time the oral history of the Flood was written the Isrealites were a conquered people living in Babylon. Like the English Pilgrims in the Netherlands they were in danger of being assimilated and disappearing as a distinct people. So the Flood story had the ark being a big box, not a ship that could be guided by the people on it, to show that God, not humans, were in control. When the ark landed the people built an altar to God in thankfullness for being saved, to acknowledge his power. In the Babylonian Flood story, when the altar is built, their gods are depicted as gathering above the smoke of the burnt offering and sniffing up the smoke, saying something like “Oh boy, we have somone to feed us and worship us again!” Their gods were dependent on people, not the other way around. It’s those little differences that are important, not the similarities, and so I read Scripture for the meaning, and study when and how it came to be, to get a greater understanding. ---
**Author:** ![Strassia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e8c25b/32.png) [@Strassia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Strassia)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2011, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-to-non-literal-christans-regarding-understanding-the-bible/597941/74 "2011-09-29T16:35:59Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Staying very, very carefully away from the other debate, and simply answering this part in the OP. > > First, being a literalist doesn’t make much sense if you are at all familiar with the difficulties of translation. In English, “In the beginning was the Word”; in Spanish, “In the beginning was the Verb” (John 1:1) - the Spanish meaning includes the English meaning, but it’s wider, so which one is perfectly right? None, and also none is the original, nor does either one use a word which is completely equivalent to the meaning of the original Logos. > > Second, and making the response very, very short (this kind of thing can be glossed for books’ worth), the point of the Adam and Eve story would be “we know what’s good for us, but we keep disregarding long-term gain for short-term one; the Original Sin is Pride, the mistake of un-reasoning that ‘getting what I want now is better than doing what I know is good for me and mine, but which isn’t so immediately pleasant.’” Is that really what you get from that story? How could Eve know what is really good for her and hers before she ate the apple. The most immediate moral of that story is that you must always do what God says and that reasoning and knowledge are the ultimate cause of all suffering. Which is my complaint with this and how it is different from the Iliad. People do take the Iliad seriously, discuss its meaning and repercussions, but they do not advocate either living by its mandates, or even worse legislating its mandates. My favorite example is the story of Onan. Even before Christianity that story had become the go to example of how God forbids masturbation. But even with no historical perspective that interpretation makes no sense at all. God was mad at Onan for refusing to impregnate his brother’s wife. He did not masturbate, he pulled out. Yet somehow that story became so entwined with the idea that masturbation is a sin that Onanism actually means masturbation. The idea that some of the advice in the Bible is timeless and some is outdated just leaves the whole thing open. I could do just as well writing up my own list of advice all over the map and let you pick and choose from that instead. > [@Frylock](#): > > Explicate the difference, then. What is it about non-literalist attitudes toward the Bible that, in your view, can’t be assimilated to non-literalist attitudes toward fiction in general? No one is trying to insert Homer into our laws. Even most atheists would accept that the Bible is worthy of study both as a literary and historical artifact as well as cultural influence. I don’t think anyone would complain at all if the Bible was treated with the same level of respect and attention the works of Shakespeare receive. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2011, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-to-non-literal-christans-regarding-understanding-the-bible/597941/75 "2011-09-29T16:38:11Z")
> [@Oakminster](#): > > The OP explicitly states that he thinks most Christians are probably literalists. > > He’s wrong. And so are you. Sure. That is why hardly any Republican candidate is a literalist and why hardly anyone in the US believes in creationism. Nonetheless, when the OP is specifically asking about the beliefs of non-literalists, a response about how there really are non-literalists seems to be a bit odd. But pretty standard. I certainly understand why rational Christians would like to believe these people are a tiny minority, but that is not what the poll numbers show. ---
**Author:** ![Skammer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skammer/32/143_2.png) [@Skammer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skammer)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2011, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-to-non-literal-christans-regarding-understanding-the-bible/597941/76 "2011-09-29T16:49:35Z")
Another mainstream, non-literalist Christian here, but I don’t have anything to add to what **UDS** has said. He (she?) has pretty much said what I would have answered, only better. The amount of misinformation assumed by non-believers in this thread is pretty revealing. Most Christians are literalists? Genesis was taken literally for thousands of years? Neither of these could be further from the truth. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2011, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-to-non-literal-christans-regarding-understanding-the-bible/597941/77 "2011-09-29T16:58:44Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > I gave what you call a “non-answer” because I don’t understand the question yet. (For me it is a “non-question” in that sense.) > > You’re right that people don’t gather weekly to discuss the Iliad. No, instead they write books and books and articles and articles about it. They (until recently) force children to read it in high school, and in many other ways take it very very seriously–all without assuming any of it is true. > > So there’s an example of fiction taken very seriously by people who know it to be false. > > So why is it a non-answer simply to say “non-literalist attitudes to scripture are very much like that”? With perhaps a few exceptions, all people who take fiction seriously (as they should) know it to be false. The Iliad is taught in school as an important part of our cultural heritage, and I am fine with the Bible being taught exactly the same way. But imagine the stink in some quarters if the Bible got the same critical analysis. If you take the Bible as a piece of fiction with an interesting historical record of both what happened and what people thought at the time happened, and with moral points worth debating, the question in the OP can be easily answered. You can use standard historical methods to determine the truth of the events portrayed, as you could for any historical fiction. You can ethical debates about the moral laws, like you might when you study Plato. But in this view the Bible is neither unique or divine. ---
**Author:** ![Strassia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e8c25b/32.png) [@Strassia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Strassia)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2011, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-to-non-literal-christans-regarding-understanding-the-bible/597941/78 "2011-09-29T16:59:37Z")
> [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](#): > > Not a Christian, so not getting into this debate, but the “knowledge of good and evil” in the original ancient Hebrew is used in much the same way we would say “from soup to nuts” or “from A to Z” to mean “everything.” > > As allegory or metaphor, the story includes lots of “lessons” including: > > - that paradise (utopian existence) is possible, but that we have to work for it > - that pursuit of knowledge is what makes us human (Some interpretations are that God isn’t REALLY angry at Adam and Eve for disobeying, that His plan all along is that we be human – questioning, inquiring, learning.) I have seen this as well. Which is an odd interpretation in that is almost exactly opposite of what is in the text. It also means God punishes humanity for doing what he wants. Or that God just wanted humanity to suffer and feel that it was deserved. My large point is that if the Bible is requires interpretation, and non-literalists by definition must think it does, then how can it authoritative? Useful, sure. I can see how someone can find solace or guidance in how they understand the book. But how can you then argue that one interpretation or another is divine law? If Sunday must be a holy day (and no alcohol can be sold on that day) why are you allowed to work on Saturday? Why can we eat pork? ---
**Author:** ![Strassia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e8c25b/32.png) [@Strassia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Strassia)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2011, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-to-non-literal-christans-regarding-understanding-the-bible/597941/79 "2011-09-29T17:04:28Z")
One very specific question for all non-literalists, especially Catholics, who believe that Christening is necessary to remove Original Sin: What is the point of Christening if there was no Adam and Eve? Why are we on the hook for a sin that never actually occurred? ---
**Author:** ![amarinth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3be4f8/32.png) [@amarinth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amarinth)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2011, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-to-non-literal-christans-regarding-understanding-the-bible/597941/80 "2011-09-29T17:47:30Z")
By “Christening” do you mean baptism of infants or very young children? That’s not really a universal practice among Christians, even non-literalist ones. And removing original sin is not always the reasoning applied even among the groups who do baptize children at young ages. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-to-non-literal-christans-regarding-understanding-the-bible/597941.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-to-non-literal-christans-regarding-understanding-the-bible/597941.md?page=5)