Leviticus 11:6 "And the hare, because he cheweth the cud , but divideth not the hoof; he is unclean unto you."
Last time I checked, hares are not ruminants, Agrarian. There are some thing we do know for certain that are not as the Bible says.
Lev 11:13-19 Bats and birds are one and the same thing...
Lev 11:23 But all other flying creeping things, which have four feet, shall be an abomination unto you.
Flying, creeping things with four feet?
Numbers 12:10 And the cloud departed from off the tabernacle; and, behold, Miriam became leprous, white as snow: and Aaron looked upon Miriam, and, behold, she was leprous.
I suppose we really don't know what cause leprosy, Agrarian. The Bible says it comes from the tabernacle and is instant.
1 Sam 2:8 ...the pillars of the earth are the LORD's, and he hath set the world upon them.
Pillars of the earth? The earth sits on pillars.
Changing knowledge indeed, Agrarian. Yes, our knowledge is always subject to change: it either tells us something we didn't know or it reveals that the glory of God's creation is something much more glorious than we or the writers of the Testaments could ever imagine.
Today, we know that God's Creation is truly beyond our imagination and keep growing! Today we know that there are more visible stars in the Universe that there are grains of sand on all the beaches and in all the deserts on earth. Today we know that there are not just billions of stars but billions of galaxies, each studded with billions of stars. Truly, the Glory of God has never been better known.
How dare you try to take on someone named Agrarian on the subject of animals! :-)
I am unaware of Christ, the Apostles, or the Fathers reaffirming any of the things from Leviticus you mention. If they claim that bats and birds are the same thing, I missed it.
You were taking at face value the claims of modern scholars that the Patriarchs, Moses and the Exodus, David, Solomon, etc. didn't exist. And that in the face of clear statements by Christ and the Apostles that they did.
Surely you see the difference between that and whether the hare chews the cud or not.
The verse from Numbers does not say that the tabernacle is the source of leprosy. Furthermore, the word leprosy was used to describe any number of skin changes or conditions. It was not synonymous with Hansen's disease as it now is. (That particular disease is caused by a mycobacterium by the way, just in case you wonder whether I can answer that one off the top of my head.) :-)
In any event, do you maintain that it is impossible for the shocking experience of the presence of God in the face of Miriam's sin to cause a change in her physical appearance, just as in the presence of holiness it can be expressed in the form of Moses' skin shining like the sun? Or do you doubt that that happened, too, and that the Fathers who refer to it are telling crazy tales and deluding themselves into thinking that they also were seeing the uncreated light?
And there are lots of poetic and metaphorical things in the Scriptures. The pillars of the earth are just the beginning. If you want to go there, the list will be very long.
What I want to know is what any of this has to do with whether we should take the words of modern scholars over the words of Christ and the Apostles on whether the Patriarchs, Moses, David, and Solomon were real people who did the things the Bible says about them.