[Serious] Literal and Not Literal

[Fake Messiah]

I think what this shows is that you’re a product of a particular cultural phenomenon, in which you see truth as reducible to a series of scientific and historical facts, a component and artifact of the scientific age, even further eroded by disintegration of communities, and relationships in people’s lives.

This is a perfect example of projecting: for you are the one, as a religious liberal, who is a product of, as you say, a "particular cultural phenomenon" because over the whole history much of the Bible has been seen literally.

For instance, 70 years ago Pope Pius XII affirmed monogenism in his encyclical Humani Generis. Insisting that a historical Adam committed a sin passed on to his offspring—as if sin were a gene that never gets lost—and those sinful offspring grew into all of humanity.

Not to mention Thomas Aquinas, whose theology OP constantly pushes here, believed in the instantaneous creation of species and of Adam and Eve as humanity’s ancestors, as well as in a young Earth (less than six thousand years old) and the literal existence of Noah and his great flood.

Indeed, if you want to read much of the Bible as allegory, you must overturn the history of theology, rewriting it to conform to your liberal, science-friendly faith. Besides pretending that you’re following in the tradition of ancient theologians, you must also explain the way you can discern truth amid the metaphors. What is allegory and what is real? How do you tell the difference? This is particularly difficult for Christians, because the historical evidence for Jesus - that is, for a real person around whom the myth accreted - is thin. And evidence for Jesus as the son of God is unconvincing, resting solely on the assertions of the Bible and interpretations of people writing decades after the events described in the Gospels.