The Bible

[Stempy]

Please point out in the bible what parts are meant to be taken literally and which ones are metaphorical.

To start with, why the need to be quite so dogmatic? Why is it so necessary to have a complete knowledge of these things? Why can't we just look at each passage on a case-by-case basis and come to our conclusions using the available resources? Isn't that the rational, skeptical thing to do?

Second, it is not as simple as dividing the Bible up into "literal" and "metaphorical". There is methaphorical language throught the whole Bible, in just the same way as all writing (from scientific to historical to even the toughest works of analytic philosophy) use simile and metaphor and other literary devices to communicate. But using metaphorical language doesn't mean that it's not talking about something real and concrete. We use the "Big Bang" as a metaphor for the initial expansion of the universe for example.

Finally, there is no such thing as a "literal" genre or a "metaphorical" genre. There are many different genres of literature in the Bible, from myth (which I'm not using in a derogatory sense) to historiography, to Wisdom literature, etc., etc. Language is employed in different ways depending on the genre, and that includes the amount and type of literary techniques like metaphor and hyperbole. And that's not just true of the Bible - it's exactly the same with the different types of writing we are used to in the modern day. We know the difference between poetry and newspaper reports; we also know that poetry can tell us many true things, and newspaper reports can tell us many false things. We can use exactly the same techniques we use to think about modern day writing as for ancient writing, provided we are willing to put ourselves in the shoes of ancient people and see how they would have understood them.

That is what we need to do with Genesis 1, just like any other piece of ancient or modern literature. We need to ask the basic questions: What type of literature is this? Who is the audience? How would they have understood this language? Without those giving us a framework, casual dismissal of Biblical literature because it contains language that we are not used to or statements that we don't understand in our modern paradigms is baseless (and actually a form of cultural discrimination).

Stempy