What's the scriptural support for literalism?

[Mangetout]

@Pleonast

Literally, that means the Law will always be in effect and says nothing to justify a literal interpretation.
Again, this literally says nothing about the literalness of the Bible.

No - you have to take it literally, and then some, to support literalism - but that seems to be the way it works - literalism precedes arguments in support of literalism.

[Mangetout]

@Polycarp

Frankly, though I know Mangetout was explaining the perspective of others, people using that verse in isolation to “prove the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible” pisses me off royally.

Understood (I know you know I’m not anything remotely like a Biblical literalist).

However, I may have been a bit unclear in my post - the two bullet points were meant to be entirely independent items of argument - that is: I’ve heard literalists argue that we should be literalists, because Jesus was, and I’ve heard them argue that we should be literalists as a logical and natural response to all scripture being God breathed, etc.

[Knorf]

@Pleonast

I think this puts kanicbird firmly in the camp of non-literalist.

I think kanicbird is confused about what the word “literal” means.

But he(she?) does seem to be arguing for some sort of meta-literalness that flies over the apparent non-literalness required for such an errant, contradictory, and wildly inconsistent set of documents.

[Mangetout]

@Knorf

But he(she?) does seem to be arguing for some sort of meta-literalness that flies over the apparent non-literalness required for such an errant, contradictory, and wildly inconsistent set of documents.

Yes, that, I think.

Or in other words, something like:
The Bible is always right, even when it is obviously wrong - because that just means it’s right in a way that we can’t possibly hope to understand.

[tomndebb]

@Ruminator

I’m saying that if I use your explanation, then the default way to read Herodotus and Thucydides is to read them metaphorically instead of literally because they are written 2000 years before the Enlightenment… unless…

That’s a false dichotomy. I have not made any claims that the older writings were metaphorical and, indeed, I noted that many writers did attempt to base their works on facts. I simply noted that the facts were not the primary driving force behind such writings and that the story and its purpose were more important than a slavish devotion to fact.

Similarly, there is much in the bible that I doubt is metaphorical, even if there is evidence that it has less fact than some would assert, (specifically in the historical stories where they would have based the stories on some understanding of an event without having an interest in presenting a specifically factual narrative with footnotes and cross references to prove the stories in the manner that we would expect).

[Ruminator]

@tomndebb

That’s a false dichotomy. I have not made any claims that the older writings were metaphorical and, indeed, I noted that many writers did attempt to base their works on facts.

I interpreted what you said earlier (literally) which was:

@tomndebb

Prior to that time, history and biography in Wesytern literature were always written to propound truths and it was pretty well understood by the audience that such moral truths were the purpose of the works. This is not to claim that no author ever bothered to try to get the facts correct, but even when the facts were correct, the purpose was never a simple recitation of facts. (There were journals and diaries where event facts were recorded, but any complex narrative was understood to provide a moral or a an explanation that was not slave to the facts on which it was based.)

With the Enlightenment, a new way of looking at information began to enter Western literature.

The blue emphasis is mine.

To be clear, I’m not arguing whether the Bible should or should not be interpreted literally. I was only noticing the “framework of thinking” as you have written it makes it look like the default way of reading Thucydides is a bunch of parables that override any sentences which may or may not coincide with actual events of war between Sparta and Athens because it was written prior to the Enlightenment.

[JThunder]

@Pleonast

If any part of the bible were to be taken literally, I would expect there to be a literal statement of that. Something like “this is the literal truth” or “this means exactly what it says, no more or less”.

Is that comment of your literally true? If so, then why did you not preface it by saing, “This is the literal truth”?

[Pleonast]

@Mangetout

No - you have to take it literally, and then some, to support literalism - but that seems to be the way it works - literalism precedes arguments in support of literalism.

I think you’re agreeing with me–the literal verse does not support a literal interpretation. Instead, you have to use another interpretation.

@JThunder

Is that comment of your literally true? If so, then why did you not preface it by saing, “This is the literal truth”?

The first question of the OP is not “is the Bible literally true?”, but “is there scriptural support for the Bible being literally true?”. For there to be scriptural support, there must be scripture that supports it. And since we’re trying to find support for a literal interpretation, it’s inconsistent to use a non-literal interpretation of scripture to support a literal interpretation.

I think it should be obvious to all by now that there is no scriptural support for a literal interpretation of the Bible, or someone would have found the scripture that literally says that.

[Reno_Nevada]

@Ruminator

I’m saying that if I use your explanation, then the default way to read Herodotus and Thucydides is to read them metaphorically instead of literally because they are written 2000 years before the Enlightenment… unless…

.

Like Tom~, I am not sure where you are going with this, but I am a fan of Herodotus, so…the *default *way to read Herodotus is definitely with a large grain of salt. Nobody who approaches it does so without understanding that he made up a lot of detail to support his points. He tells a lot of terrific stories but you have to accept them for what they are. I don’t know that I would call them *metaphorical *but they are definitely not literally true.

I was going to limit the *nobody * up above to, perhaps, *nobody sane *but I have never heard of schizophrenics being convinced that Herodotus is received truth, so I think I will just keep it with nobody.

[Ruminator]

@Reno_Nevada

the *default *way to read Herodotus is definitely with a large grain of salt. Nobody who approaches it does so without understanding that he made up a lot of detail to support his points.

Yes, I understand the “Father of Lies” and all that. Let me expand on my short reply to E-Sabbath in post #35.

Scholars can read Herodotus’s writings about Egypt and argue that he may be lying about it. Or stretching the truth. Maybe he didn’t even visit Egypt at all. That’s type of disagreement and questioning is common.

But the difference I’m talking about is the metaphorical, symbolic, allegorical reading of the words themselves. Among all that bickering among scholars, we do not scrutinize the Herodotus’s use of the word “Egypt” and wonder if he’s talking about an area around the Nile river, or is the word “Egypt” a code-word for some heavenly body (a large asteroid observed with telescope), or maybe “Egypt” is a placeholder for a fictional setting in his daydreams. We do not scrutinize the word “Egypt” in this manner even though it was written 2000 years before the Enlightenment.

Whereas, with the Bible, we now have an abundance of words with symbolic meaning, “…and on the 4th day, He created sun, moon” where “day” is not to be interpreted as a 24-hour period but some placeholder for some universal time-scale epoch.

tomndebb’s explanation that the Enlightenment retrofitted literal meaning when it wasn’t meant to be there in the first place, to me, seems inconsistent explanation of how we scrutinize other ancient works regarding the interpretation of the words themselves.

I don’t see a clear boundary in history marked by the Enlightenment (or any other event) that says that humans have changed their writing of words from metaphorical to literal. Maybe I misread tomndebb’s decision tree for reading ancient works but that’s how I understood it.

[Shodan]

OTOH, there are parts of the Bible that are clearly not to be taken literally - the parables of the Prodigal Son, and Lazarus and the rich man, for instance.

The Bible has a large range of literary forms that it employs - poetry, folk tale, myth, straightforward history, revisionist history, apocalyptic literature, who knows what. It doesn’t generally signal what types it is using. You have to read it seriously and on its own terms to understand which is which, and even then it isn’t always clear.

But to assume that the book of Job must be read in the same way that the book of Acts is intended to be just because it doesn’t have a disclaimer before chapter 1 is a disservice to the text and the reader.

Regards,
Shodan

[Jas09]

@yelimS

The Buddah also says something against taking anyone’s word on its own virtue, and I think it’s even the opening lines of some book, but I can’t remember which one. If anyone does, I’d love a reminder, as I’ve been looking (lazily) for it for a while.

The Buddha quote as I have heard it is as follows:

@Siddhārtha Gautama

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. Do not believe anything because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything because it is written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and the benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.

It is from Kalamas Sutra.

[Voyager]

@tomndebb

That’s a false dichotomy. I have not made any claims that the older writings were metaphorical and, indeed, I noted that many writers did attempt to base their works on facts. I simply noted that the facts were not the primary driving force behind such writings and that the story and its purpose were more important than a slavish devotion to fact.

Similarly, there is much in the bible that I doubt is metaphorical, even if there is evidence that it has less fact than some would assert, (specifically in the historical stories where they would have based the stories on some understanding of an event without having an interest in presenting a specifically factual narrative with footnotes and cross references to prove the stories in the manner that we would expect).

Perhaps the metaphorical interpretation of the Bible comes from partial-literalism, which I just made up and define as the position that the Bible is true in a larger sense, but not literally true in the Fundamentalist sense. (I’m sure there is a real term for this position.)
I don’t think you can apply partial-literalism to the works of ancient historians or biographers. They no doubt wrote fables due to accepting rumors of interesting beasts uncritically, for propaganda value, or to butter up a ruler or the descendants of a ruler, or to just make a better story.
And I hardly think anyone can claim this behavior stopped with the Enlightenment. Just look at Parson Weems’ fables about George Washington, or just about any current political memoir.

But an interesting question is this. Given that people did not write uncritically back then, did people read equally uncritically? (Not counting philosophical opponents of a writer, who’d find fault uncritically.)

[Knorf]

@Shodan

The Bible has a large range of literary forms that it employs - poetry, folk tale, myth, straightforward history, revisionist history, apocalyptic literature, who knows what. It doesn’t generally signal what types it is using. You have to read it seriously and on its own terms to understand which is which, and even then it isn’t always clear.

Indeed.

In my experience, even people (such as my parents) who say the Bible is literally true in all regards don’t actually read it that way at all. There’s always a huge mash of interpretation.

[kanicbird]

@Diogenes_the_Cynic

Nothing in the Bible really even acknowledges that there IS a Bible as such. The Bible is not one book, but a library of books which were mostly written independently of each other. The authors did not know they were writing part of a larger “Bible.” They each thought they were writing their own individual book.

So the Bible doesn’t actually say anything about “the Bible” as a whole at all.

Thanks DtC, this is a perfect example of how God works through His people. The person is acting guided by the Holy Spirit does only a part of the work of God, it is God that works through many people to produce the Bible He wanted.

God even used you to reveal that to me, Praise God!

[Voyager]

@kanicbird

Thanks DtC, this is a perfect example of how God works through His people. The person is acting guided by the Holy Spirit does only a part of the work of God, it is God that works through many people to produce the Bible He wanted.

How would you tell sections of the Bible that are divinely inspired from those that might not be? Or do you think that the selection was inspired also. In that case, are the Apocrypha inspired or not?

[Mangetout]

@Pleonast

I think you’re agreeing with me–the literal verse does not support a literal interpretation. Instead, you have to use another interpretation.

Yes, I am agreeing with you. In order to discover that the Bible is literally true on the basis of some statement to that effect within the Bible, you would have to have already accepted that (at least this part of) the Bile was literally true.

I suppose one might previously have only been certain that the Bible was literally true in speaking about itself, but that seem an unlikely position for anyone to inhabit.