NetDoc said:
Again, I don't believe they understood your concept of "literally". How could they mean it in such a way when they have no clue what that way is?
Great question. I think there's good reason to believe that the people who wrote the various parts of the Old Testament understood how to write figuratively and how to write a historical narrative. I would note that there are clear examples of allegory in the Old Testament. For example, consider Psalm 80: 8-19:
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Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt: Thou hast cast out the heathen, and planted it. Thou preparedst room before it, and didst cause it to take deep root, and it filled the land. The hills were covered with the shadow of it, and the boughs thereof were like the goodly cedars. She sent out her boughs unto the sea, and her branches unto the river. Why hast Thou then broken down her hedges, so that all they which pass by the way do pluck her? The boar out of the wood doth waste it, and the wild beast of the field doth devour it. Return, we beseech thee, O God of hosts: look down from heaven, and behold, and visit this vine; And the vineyard which thy right hand hath planted, and the branch that thou madest strong for thyself. It is burned with fire, it is cut down: they perish at the rebuke of thy countenance. Let thy hand be upon the man of thy right hand, upon the son of man whom thou madest strong for thyself. So will not we go back from thee: quicken us, and we will call upon thy name. Turn us again, O LORD God of hosts, cause thy face to shine; and we shall be saved.
Here, Israel is being described as a vine. It's clear that the passage is not about a real vine, but that the vine represents Israel. It's not saying Israel came from a vine, nor does the imagery of the vine explain any unknown aspect of Israel. The vine is simply an imaginative way of describing Israel. Now let's consider (part of) Genesis:
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1In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
5And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
6And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
7And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
8And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
9And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
10And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.
11And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
12And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
13And the evening and the morning were the third day.
Unlike the other passage, this describes events that happened in the past. Furthermore, unlike the other passage, this passage
explains a lot of things that people couldn't explain at the time: how the Earth Sun and Moon were formed, how the universe got to be the way it is, how life and humans came to be. While the first passage used a vine as a way of
describing Israel, this passage
explains the reason things are the way they are--it's purpose is to explain things (e.g. where women came from, why childbirth involves pain, why animals have the names they do). Unlike the last passage, in which Israel was explicitly related to a vine, the author(s) of Genesis make no mention of an outside topic for which this story might be an allegory. Nor do the various details lend themselves to greater meaning. For example, if the authors didn't really believe that the Earth was created before the Sun, and if they didn't really want their audiences to believe it, why did they specifically include the details of which days the Sun and Earth were created, and specifically have Earth being created on an earlier day than the Sun? It might be tempting for us, as a modern audience, with our modern knowledge that the Sun came long before Earth, to cast this knowledge back on the authors and assume that this detail is insignificant; but if we remember context, and if we remember that these people
didn't know these things, it's easy to see that this was believed to be true and intended that way when written.
NetDoc said:
They did their best to explain God and in that I can rely. Do you have evidence to the contrary???
I'm not saying they didn't do their best to explain God. I'm saying that they were also trying to explain other things--like how the Earth formed. I'm saying that ancient Hebrews believed the Earth was flat, that the sky was a fixed firmament of stars, that the Earth rested atop pillars in an ocean. I'm saying they believed that the Sun and Moon were created after the Earth was created. Many parts of Genesis (and the rest of the Old Testament) are incoherent unless these things are assumed to be true.
That's all I'm saying. I'm not trying to "disprove" the Bible, or insult your (or anyone's) faith; I'm not even saying that it is wrong to
interpret Genesis as an allegory or metaphor. In fact, I think it's a great thing that ancient legends are reinterpreted/re-examined. I just think that it's important not to mistake a modern interpretation for the original beliefs/intents of the authors. That's all.
