More like re-interpreting it.
Either the whole Bible is to be taken literally or none of it is.
You need a lot a interpretation room to get around the self-contradictory nature of the bible. So that leaves us with none.
Parts of the bible are someone recollections of visions and dreams. There are parts that are by design subject to interpretation.
So God literally didn't know where Adam and Eve were when they "hid" themselves in the garden?
Yeah, the pope is a doofus. What does he know about the Bible?
Either the whole Bible is to be taken literally or none of it is.
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I’d restate that to all of the Bible must be taken to be infallible. That’s different than literal. Clearly when God “breathes” it is figurative, not literal. Christ spoke in parables, also figurative, not literal, but regarding something else entirely.
Here’s one for you.
Anyone who echoes the fundamentalists perview of THE BIBLE IS ENTIRE LITERAL ignores one basic fact. They deny the fact that Bible has been written and translated by people. People who were inspired and directed by God, but men none the less. Now while GOD has purity of motive, men tend to the sinful. People have chosen what goes in the bible and what has not over the years.
So given the choice of worshipping a book written through the ages by people or the spirit of God that the Bible represents, I will take the spirit of god.
Science and Religion are opposite sides of the same coin. Both the scientist and theologian are searching for the answers to the mysteries that God has created.
Exactly when did Jesus say to take literally the Bible that was to be composed decades after his death? Jews don’t even treat the 7 (6) days of Creation as a traditional calendar week, and Genesis is their intellectual property.
Jesus taught in parables. I'm sure there wasn't really a guy with talents and nobody actually sowed seeds on the rocks. He used allegory to convey his message. Why, then, can I not believe that the first 7 days is also allegorical?
In which language: Aramaic, Hebrew, Koine, Greek, or Latin?
Which version: The Tanakh, the Vulgate, King James, or Douai?
Which author and which story of creation in the book of Genesis should I accept as the literal truth, the first or the second?
Oh, by the way, is it YHWH or Elohim?
If I am going to take the whole Bible literally, does that mean the earliest surviving complete manuscript, the Codex Amiatinus?
Either the whole Bible is to be taken literally or none of it is.How can one take Matthew 27:9-10 literally when the text cites a passage in Jeremiah that isn't there? Check it out for yourself.
--Resolute Conservative
If you can find the passage Matthew attributes to Jeremiah somewhere in Jeremiah I will consider taking the whole Bible literally as you do, if not, you should consider the possibility that your approach to scripture needs to be adjusted.
“Either the whole Bible is to be taken literally or none of it is.”
You must mean the Jewish Bible, the part that contains Genesis, the early part of which discusses the Creation. OK, fine. Just understand that Jewish Theology is a WHOLE lot more sophisticated than the 300,000 or so letters of the 5 Books of Moses would lead you to believe. There is the Mishneh Torah (Oral Torah/Law) which explains in great detail the obligations inherent in the letter of the law (much as regulations explain civil or criminal laws), and there are also other sources that can (and need to be) used to fully understand the 5 Books (as much as that is humanly possible). I don’t pretend to be an expert, but I’ve read enough to know that many thousands of years ago there were calculations done to show that the universe was, according to G-d’s word, some 15 3/4 billion years old. You just have to dig to find it...
Here’s a GREAT source of explanation of this matter, written by Dr. Gerald Schroeder, an astrophysicist who also happens to be a knowledgable, believing, Orthodox Jew:
http://www.geraldschroeder.com/age.html Here are a couple of excerpts:
“In trying to understand the flow of time here, you have to remember that the entire Six Days is described in 31 sentences. The Six Days of Genesis, which have given people so many headaches in trying to understand science vis-a-vis the Bible are confined to 31 sentences! At MIT, in the Hayden library, we had about 50,000 books that deal with the development of the universe: cosmology, chemistry, thermodynamics, paleontology, archaeology, the high-energy physics of creation. Up the river at Harvard, at the Weiger library, they probably have 200,000 books on these same topics. The Bible gives us 31 sentences. Don’t expect that by a simple reading of those sentences, you’ll know every detail that is held within the text. It’s obvious that we have to dig deeper to get the information out.
The idea of having to dig deeper is not a rationalization. The Talmud (Chagiga, ch. 2) tells us that from the opening sentence of the Bible, through the beginning of Chapter Two, the entire text is given in parable form, a poem with a text and a subtext. Now, again, put yourself into the mindset of 1500 years ago, the time of the Talmud. Why would the Talmud think it was parable? You think that 1500 years ago they thought that G-d couldn’t make it all in 6 days? It was a problem for them? We have a problem today with cosmology and scientific data. But 1500 years ago, what’s the problem with 6 days? No problem.
So when the Sages excluded these six days from the calendar, and said that the entire text is parable, it wasn’t because they were trying to apologize away what they’d seen in the local museum. There was no local museum. No one was out there digging up ancient fossils. The fact is that a close reading of the text makes it clear that there’s information hidden and folded into layers below the surface.”
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“There are early Jewish sources that tell us that the calendar is in two-parts (even predating Leviticus Rabba which goes back almost 1500 years and says it explicitly). In the closing speech that Moses makes to the people, he says if you want to see the fingerprint of G-d in the universe, “consider the days of old, the years of the many generations” (Deut. 32:7) Nachmanides, in the name of Kabbalah, says, “Why does Moses break the calendar into two parts - ‘The days of old, and the years of the many generations?’ Because, ‘Consider the days of old’ is the Six Days of Genesis. ‘The years of the many generations’ is all the time from Adam forward.”
Moses says you can see G-d’s fingerprint on the universe in one of two ways. Look at the phenomenon of the Six Days, and the development of a universe which is mind-boggling. Or if that doesn’t impress you, then just consider society from Adam forward - the phenomenon of human history. Either way, you will find the imprint of G-d.”
It is a LONG article, but very, very worth the time invested to understand that a literal reading of the Bible simply cannot be correct - both from a theological point of view and from a scientific one. Remember, G-d gave us a brain and senses to understand the world He created, and hands with which to build tools to enhance those senses in order to understand it better.
BTW, Schroeder wrote a book entitled, “Genesis and the Big Bang” which is a fascinating and informative read.
DEU 14:11-18 says that a bat is a bird.
A bat isn’t a bird.
Does that mean the rest of the bible isn’t to be taken literally?
In the primary sense. But sometimes people are speaking figuratively, like when Jesus speaks of "moving mountains," etc. It seems doubtful that the writer of Genesis was trying to present a modern, scientific account of the origins of the cosmos. And remember that "taking the Bible literally" cuts both ways.
John 6I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world."
Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?"
Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him.
Or some is and some isn't.