Reply #20: Again, I'm not saying they should be read literally

[uberllama42]

or trying to imply that you read the stories literally.

I think it's an interesting academic question, whether or not the biblical stories were intended to be literal. The original meaning of the writings has a bearing on what metaphorical significance they have for modern readers. I think JG makes some good points about details in the Gospels that wouldn't be there if they were merely metaphorical.

Thanks for pointing me toward those two books. I will check them out.

My understanding is that the early books of the Old Testament were recorded from oral traditions of various Hebrew groups which were not always in complete agreement with each other. There are some false assertions that would have been easily verifiable if the authors had been concerned with evidence. There is the assertion that insects have four legs and that hares are ruminant animals. The same thing happened in writings by Greek philosophers- the famous assertion by Aristotle that women had fewer teeth than men, for instance. No one practiced scientific rigor at that time. Lack of attention to some of these details does not mean that the texts were not meant to be taken literally.

Due to the varied authorship of the books of the bible, it is also possible that some were intended to be literal accounts and others were written as parables. That runs into the exegetical problem of distinguishing the one from the other, and pretty much precludes the bible form being the inspired word of God. But that is another discussion.