(October 16, 2018 at 4:44 pm)Bahana Wrote: I'm an atheist that reads it like mythology. I'd like to get the original author's intent though, if possible.
For me, it's a bit simpler than that. I always go with the default mode of interpretation (i.e., literalism) unless evidence (and/or scholarly work) strongly suggests otherwise. It's not clear at all that the original author(s) intended these passages to be literal or allegorical, which is why I have chosen to interpret this literally. Other posters are free to interpret differently, of course. We're having a Bible study here, not some rigid scholarly work which even theists themselves don't generally do when they're doing a Bible study.
