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Pardon me while I put on my "Christian fundamentalist" hat.......

As a Christian, Zulu, how do you determine what is literal and what is not?

Are all things that are impossible for man (but not God) explained away by your interpretations?

Out of curisosity, I'd like to ask your interpretation of just a few things, though there are many more:

1) The Resurrection
2) Walking on water
3) Immaculate conception
4) Water to wine
5) Multiplying the bread and fish

These are only a few things that defy logic for man, yet we are told (and I believe) they indeed happened.

"As a Christian, Zulu, how do you determine what is literal and what is not?"

When a statement in the Bible totally goes against all scientific knowledge, and when the statement is not really germaine to the main thrust of the idea the Bible is trying to get across, and when the essence of the statement can be viewed as symbolical or allegorical, I choose to do the latter.

"1) The Resurrection "

I think the Bible is especially clear on the issue of the Resurrection. It is a central point in the belief of all or nearly all Christians, unlike whether or not snakes eat dust.

"2) Walking on water"

All Christians concur that Christ performed many miracles in his life and this is one of them. And it is so described as a miracle, i.e. something outside of the natural occurance of things. All Christians should recognize and believe in Christ's miracles as they are a proof of what He said He was, unlike the need to believe that snakes have no limbs because God cursed Satan somewhere back in man's earliest most distant past.

"3) Immaculate conception"

This isn't a trick question is it? All Four gospels, I believe, seem to imply that Mary conceived a Son through the interaction of the Spirit of God and that seems proof enough to me.

"4) Water to wine
5) Multiplying the bread and fish"

See "Walking on Water"

I think, as a Christian, that a good part of what is related in the New Testament can be taken literally. The events occurred relatively recently in time, they are frequently repeated in several sources (the different Gospels) and a good part of them are central to Christian beliefs and the teachings of Christ. The evolution of species is not one of those issues.

A lot of what is told in the Old Testament occurred very long ago, in a society more distant from Christ's time than we are from the time of the Romans. Did Job REALLY exist??
Biblical scholars tell us this, not Genesis is probably the oldest book in the Bible. OR, is it an allegorical or symbolic story designed to convey some truth about human existance and the power of God and the helplessness of man before that Power? Was it important whether or not Job DID exist if you get the message behind the story?

Some parts of Genesis are the same. Sure, miracles can happen, God could have taken a lump of literal clay to make Adam and formed Eve from his rib. BUT, it would seem to me that scientific evidence indicates God used a lower creature to produce th first man. And the serpent in the Graden of Eden was not a real snake, it was Satan in the form of a snake - a very different creature.