Biblical literalism

The claim that Bible believers are literalists is a bogus argument used to denigrate Christians and other adherents. Wikipedia notes, "The term "biblical literalism" is often used as a pejorative to describe or ridicule the interpretative approaches of fundamentalist or evangelical Christians."

Do skeptics really think we Christians believe God is a giant bird in the 91st Psalm (91:5)? Come on.

There's all kinds of literary devices found in the Bible. There's symbolism, similes, metaphors, idioms, and allegories, etc., etc. But will you ever hear the skeptics mention those exist when they do an OP on Bible literalists? The individual who wrote the OP Post #1 apparently doesn't know about them, or deliberately chose not to mention it. Nor did hardly any of the skeptics who posted afterwards. Nope, they'd rather continue the charade that Bible believers must be truly ignorant individuals.

And then there's the skeptics who claim they know more about the Bible than Christian believers. They fail to mention all the hundreds and hundreds of times their sophomoric arguments are shot down. Sure, there's some skeptics who know more, but there's a great cadre of other believers who eat their lunches regularly. Skeptics will cite contradiction after contradiction from skeptics websites but do they ever read websites that explain or counter those alleged contradictions? Not in a million years.

And by the way, skeptics love to use literalist arguments and examples against believers to try to make them look ignorant, when the truth is that they are the ones who actually look foolish.

JJ50 said:

The Bible is NOT a historical novel!

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There's TONS of historical information in the Bible. But a lot of skeptics don't do their homework so they make foolish statements like that one.

Here's just one example of historical individuals noted in the Bible:

List of biblical figures identified in extra-biblical sources - Wikipedia

The Hebrew phrase for “breath of life” used in Genesis 2:7; 6:17; 7:15, 22, is not found anywhere else in Scripture. However, it is found in the Eridu Genesis, a Sumerian text which was copied and read by the Babylonians.

Certain names appear only in Genesis 1-11 and books written during or after the Babylonian exile; typically they appear later in 1 Chronicles 5 or later books as personal names, and in Isaiah and Ezekiel as place names. Some names appear as personal names before the exile, but as place names only during or after the exile. A few names appear only in Genesis 10.

1. Gomer (Genesis 10:2-3, 1 Chronicles 1:5-6, Ezekiel 38:6, Hosea 1:3).
2. Magog (Genesis 10:2, 1 Chronicles 1:5, Ezekiel 38:2; 39:6).
3. Madai (Genesis 10:2, 1 Chronicles 1:5).
4. Javan (Genesis 10:2, 4, 1 Chronicles 1:5, 7, Isaiah 66:19, Ezekiel 27:13).
5. Tubal (Genesis 4;22; 10:2, 1 Chronicles 1:5, Isaiah 66:19, Ezekiel 27:13; 32:26; 38:2-3; 39:1).
6. Meshech (Genesis 10:2, 1 Chronicles 1:5, Psalm 120:5, Ezekiel 27:13; 32:26; 38:2-3; 39:1).
7. Tiras (Genesis 10:2, 1 Chronicles 1:5).
8. Togarmah (Genesis 10:3, 1 Chronicles 1:6, Ezekiel 27:14; 38:6).
9. Dodanim (Genesis 10:4).
10. Dedan (Genesis 10:7; 25:3, 1 Chronicles 1:9, 32, Jeremiah 25:23; 49:8, Ezekiel 25:13; 27:20; 38:13).
11. Akkad (Genesis 10:10).
12. Erech (Genesis 10:10).
13. Calah (Genesis 10:11-12).
14. Resen Genesis 10:12).

Some verses in Genesis 1-11 use place names which help date the text. In particular, several verses in Genesis 10 indicate the chapter could not have been written until after the reign of Solomon.

1. Genesis 2:14; 10:11. These verses refers to Assyria, which did not exist until the reign of Assuruballit I (1363-1328 BCE). The city of Assur was built earlier (around 2,500 BCE), but was ruled over by Akkadians, Amorites, and Babylonians in succession. Assyria did not become an independent state with Assur as its capital reign of Assuruballit I.
   
   
2. Genesis 10:11. This verse refers to Nineveh as part of Assyria, but it was not until the reign of Assuruballit I (1363-1328 BCE), that Nineveh became part of Assyrian territory. Note that Nineveh is mentioned in Genesis 10:11-12, but not mentioned again until 2 Kings, written during the exile; this supports the conclusion that Genesis 11 was not written before the exile.
   
   
3. continued

The Political Compass

Spartan said:

The claim that Bible believers are literalists is a bogus argument used to denigrate Christians and other adherents. Wikipedia notes, "The term "biblical literalism" is often used as a pejorative to describe or ridicule the interpretative approaches of fundamentalist or evangelical Christians."

Do skeptics really think we Christians believe God is a giant bird in the 91st Psalm (91:5)? Come on.

There's all kinds of literary devices found in the Bible. There's symbolism, similes, metaphors, idioms, and allegories, etc., etc. But will you ever hear the skeptics mention those exist when they do an OP on Bible literalists? The individual who wrote the OP Post #1 apparently doesn't know about them, or deliberately chose not to mention it. Nor did hardly any of the skeptics who posted afterwards. Nope, they'd rather continue the charade that Bible believers must be truly ignorant individuals.

And then there's the skeptics who claim they know more about the Bible than Christian believers. They fail to mention all the hundreds and hundreds of times their sophomoric arguments are shot down. Sure, there's some skeptics who know more, but there's a great cadre of other believers who eat their lunches regularly. Skeptics will cite contradiction after contradiction from skeptics websites but do they ever read websites that explain or counter those alleged contradictions? Not in a million years.

And by the way, skeptics love to use literalist arguments and examples against believers to try to make them look ignorant, when the truth is that they are the ones who actually look foolish.

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I see that you are basing your arguments on your lack of knowledge again. A Bible literalist is usually one that believes the myths of Exodus and Genesis. And as usual there is a range in what literalists believe. YEC's used to be the extreme, but lately, in a giant step backwards, Flat Earthers are now the most extreme of the literalists.

Spartan said:

There's TONS of historical information in the Bible. But a lot of skeptics don't do their homework so they make foolish statements like that one.

Here's just one example of historical individuals noted in the Bible:

List of biblical figures identified in extra-biblical sources - Wikipedia

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Don't be so silly. Not doing their homework is the tendency of believers. Yes, there are many historical figures mentioned in the Bible. That only means it is not all made up, which was never the claim of any skeptic that I am aware of.

Spartan said:

The claim that Bible believers are literalists is a bogus argument used to denigrate Christians and other adherents. Wikipedia notes, "The term "biblical literalism" is often used as a pejorative to describe or ridicule the interpretative approaches of fundamentalist or evangelical Christians."

Do skeptics really think we Christians believe God is a giant bird in the 91st Psalm (91:5)? Come on.

There's all kinds of literary devices found in the Bible. There's symbolism, similes, metaphors, idioms, and allegories, etc., etc. But will you ever hear the skeptics mention those exist when they do an OP on Bible literalists? The individual who wrote the OP Post #1 apparently doesn't know about them, or deliberately chose not to mention it. Nor did hardly any of the skeptics who posted afterwards. Nope, they'd rather continue the charade that Bible believers must be truly ignorant individuals.

And then there's the skeptics who claim they know more about the Bible than Christian believers. They fail to mention all the hundreds and hundreds of times their sophomoric arguments are shot down. Sure, there's some skeptics who know more, but there's a great cadre of other believers who eat their lunches regularly. Skeptics will cite contradiction after contradiction from skeptics websites but do they ever read websites that explain or counter those alleged contradictions? Not in a million years.

And by the way, skeptics love to use literalist arguments and examples against believers to try to make them look ignorant, when the truth is that they are the ones who actually look foolish.

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So you are redefining literalist and fundamentalist.

Subduction Zone said:

Don't be so silly. Not doing their homework is the tendency of believers. Yes, there are many historical figures mentioned in the Bible. That only means it is not all made up, which was never the claim of any skeptic that I am aware of.

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There are some historical figures, but much of what is attributed to many of them is not credible.

JJ50 said:

There are some historical figures, but much of what is attributed to many of them is not credible.

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Correct. It is on the order of Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter. There are very real names in that movie. The events, not so much.

Subduction Zone said:

I see that you are basing your arguments on your lack of knowledge again. A Bible literalist is usually one that believes the myths of Exodus and Genesis. And as usual there is a range in what literalists believe. YEC's used to be the extreme, but lately, in a giant step backwards, Flat Earthers are now the most extreme of the literalists.

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There wasn't any global flood. There are too many ancient civilizations that weren't interrupted.

Its on par with claiming Joshua wiped out the Canaanites and destroyed their cities. That never happened either.

Spartan said:

The claim that Bible believers are literalists is a bogus argument used to denigrate Christians and other adherents. Wikipedia notes, "The term "biblical literalism" is often used as a pejorative to describe or ridicule the interpretative approaches of fundamentalist or evangelical Christians."

Do skeptics really think we Christians believe God is a giant bird in the 91st Psalm (91:5)? Come on.

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When people refer to Christians who are Biblical Literalists, I do not believe they are suggesting they mistake such obvious metaphors as factual. That is not what is being pointed to in speaking of their literalism. It's the taking of stories such as the fall in the Garden of Eden, or fire falling from heaven to consume one's enemies, or walking on water, etc, as literal historic and scientific facts.

It's that they don't see the symbolic meaning of the stories, without the stories being read as facts. That's what literalism means, not that you don't understanding common uses in language everyone recognizes.

Spartan said:

There's all kinds of literary devices found in the Bible. There's symbolism, similes, metaphors, idioms, and allegories, etc., etc. But will you ever hear the skeptics mention those exist when they do an OP on Bible literalists?

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Why is it you denigrate reasonable understandings of the symbolic nature of mythologies not being literal factual events in their stories as "skepticism"? That's a pejorative meant to dismiss legitimate rational critiques. I myself am not "skeptical" about the Garden of Eden mythology. It's a mythology, and I see the truth and value in it. Do I believe it's literal fact? Of course not. That's not skepticism. That's just how I see the truth of it.

To not see the same thing as a literalist does in reading the story of Adam and Eve, is not skepticism. It's just a different set of eyes and a different mode of thinking. If it's skepticism on my part I don't see it the way you do, then isn't it skepticism on your part you don't see it the way I do?

Spartan said:

The individual who wrote the OP Post #1 apparently doesn't know about them, or deliberately chose not to mention it. Nor did hardly any of the skeptics who posted afterwards. Nope, they'd rather continue the charade that Bible believers must be truly ignorant individuals.

And then there's the skeptics who claim they know more about the Bible than Christian believers. They fail to mention all the hundreds and hundreds of times their sophomoric arguments are shot down. Sure, there's some skeptics who know more, but there's a great cadre of other believers who eat their lunches regularly. Skeptics will cite contradiction after contradiction from skeptics websites but do they ever read websites that explain or counter those alleged contradictions? Not in a million years.

And by the way, skeptics love to use literalist arguments and examples against believers to try to make them look ignorant, when the truth is that they are the ones who actually look foolish.

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So many pejorative remarks about "skeptics". This is your strawman to try to discount and dismiss those who see things through a different set of eyes than you do. The actual word for that is not skepticism, but cynicism.

Cynicism is not a rational critique of something one has doubts about, but an irrational dismissal of something as bad because we don't like it.

JJ50 said:

I cannot understand how some Christians can actually believe all the Bible to be literally true, including the passages which have no credibility like the creation story, the flood, and much of what is attributed to Jesus. Not all Christians are Biblical literalists thank goodness, only the more extreme ones.

I don't know what causes some people to suspend all logic when reading that book.

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Most Christians also believe that the gospel stories were written by diciples of Jesus who reported from either their own memories or those of others.

In reality however, the original story was composed by a single man of whom it is said that he hard heard stuff from Peter and never knew Jesus.
The other three stories are just embellished versions copied from the original, its successors and an independent sayings source.

So it is very hard to be sure if any historical reality is present in the Christian gospel story. And if there is, this will mainly be found in the first half of gMark.

Marcion said:

Most Christians also believe that the gospel stories were written by diciples of Jesus who reported from either their own memories or those of others.

In reality however, the original story was composed by a single man of whom it is said that he hard heard stuff from Peter and never knew Jesus.
The other three stories are just embellished versions copied from the original, its successors and an independent sayings source.

So it is very hard to be sure if any historical reality is present in the Christian gospel story. And if there is, this will mainly be found in the first half of gMark.

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The gospels were written well after Jesus was dead. Nothing was apparently written down when he was alive, so it would be impossible for anyone to quote word for word what he actually said when he was treading the boards on Earth. I couldn't quote word for what someone said to me last week,let alone years later.

JJ50 said:

The gospels were written well after Jesus was dead. Nothing was apparently written down when he was alive, so it would be impossible for anyone to quote word for word what he actually said when he was treading the boards on Earth. I couldn't quote word for what someone said to me last week,let alone years later.

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Nevertheless, it seems someone memorized the sayings in the sayings source (Q). Its ideology is still quite different from that of the Christian gospel, so somehow it escaped the filter that the Christian gospel story went through. Of course the filtering did happen during the proces of absorption into gMatthew and gLuke which is why there was a need to make a reconstruction of Q.

Spartan said:

There's TONS of historical information in the Bible. But a lot of skeptics don't do their homework so they make foolish statements like that one.

Here's just one example of historical individuals noted in the Bible:

List of biblical figures identified in extra-biblical sources - Wikipedia

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Have you ever wondered why none of them are earlier than the 9th century BC? This list doesn't include ANY of the patriarchs; it doesn't include the greatest figure in the OT, Moses.

To me this is evidence that the OT wasn't composed until very late.

When I was about 14 I questioned the YEC pastor of the awful pentecostal Elim church I attended, about dinosaurs, which are much older than the 10,000 years the YECs believe the earth to be. He told me that god put their skeletons in the ground as a test of faith. My faith took a nose dive from thereon with that crazy answer!

Marcion said:

In reality however, the original story was composed by a single man of whom it is said that he hard heard stuff from Peter and never knew Jesus.

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When you state something as a fact without any evidence for it, you undercut any credibility you think you may have.

Secondly, those who study Koine Greek tell us that there are different authors, not only with the gospels but also that some of the letters traditionally attributed to Paul that seemingly can't all be written by Paul because of the writing styles are different at times. Some of the Bible commentaries at the beginning of each book cover this.

Attempting to know exactly who wrote what is very much a theological challenge, but I don't too much get into that as my approach tends to be quite different than with most people (see "My Faith Statement" at the bottom of my posts for clarification). It's interesting to discuss, but there's simply so much that we simply don't know.

JJ50 said:

When I was about 14 I questioned the YEC pastor of the awful pentecostal Elim church I attended, about dinosaurs, which are much older than the 10,000 years the YECs believe the earth to be. He told me that god put their skeletons in the ground as a test of faith. My faith took a nose dive from thereon with that crazy answer!

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I have heard that answer before and yes it is crazy.... Its also insulting.

JJ50 said:

When I was about 14 I questioned the YEC pastor of the awful pentecostal Elim church I attended, about dinosaurs, which are much older than the 10,000 years the YECs believe the earth to be. He told me that god put their skeletons in the ground as a test of faith. My faith took a nose dive from thereon with that crazy answer!

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Ya, I run across this before when in the fundamentalist Protestant church I grew up in. Matter of fact, the first time that I ran across someone that was Christian and accepted the ToE was a Catholic priest that I ran across at a bowling alley back in the summer of 1962 when I was still in high school. In 1967, I married a Catholic woman and converted to Catholicism in 1975, and the CC does accept the ToE as long as it's understood that in some way God created all. .

metis said:

Ya, I run across this before when in the fundamentalist Protestant church I grew up in. Matter of fact, the first time that I ran across someone that was Christian and accepted the ToE was a Catholic priest that I ran across at a bowling alley back in the summer of 1962 when I was still in high school. In 1967, I married a Catholic woman and converted to Catholicism in 1975, and the CC does accept the ToE as long as it's understood that in some way God created all. .

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ToE ?

JJ50 said:

When I was about 14 I questioned the YEC pastor of the awful pentecostal Elim church I attended, about dinosaurs, which are much older than the 10,000 years the YECs believe the earth to be. He told me that god put their skeletons in the ground as a test of faith. My faith took a nose dive from thereon with that crazy answer!

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Ned Flanders tells Rod and Todd the same thing in the Simpson's video game.