[Serious] Literal and Not Literal

[Belacqua]

However, these people believing this book is divine is certainly different than them just believing it's a good book, no?

That's certainly true. 

Proust's novel is an extremely good book, but not holy. 

The Bible is holy to many many people because they -- and their tradition -- have made it holy. 

It's not that; I simply have to wonder, when you beat around the bush and make these lengthy diatribes, how interested are you in actually answering the question.

It's your judgment that I'm "beating around the bush." I think I'm answering the questions, though I guess not in the way you'd like.

I have to wonder if it provoked any commentary worth listening to. 

Well, sure. But that's a separate question.

The Bible provoked a long commentary for lots of people. Is it worth your while to learn this commentary? That's up to you. If you're not interested, my personal advice would be to ignore it as much as possible. 

Is someone in today's world better off for understanding the Bible and the context it was written in and the conversation around it? It seems to me that you could go your entire life without ever hearing about this book and, if anything, you'd be better off not having to worry yourself with the silly ideas that the Christian religion proposes.

It depends on what you want to do.

If you want to discuss that tradition in an intelligent way, then it makes sense to understand the tradition. If you don't want to think about it, or debate it, or fight about it, then sure -- read something else. 

Once again, you try to paint these early Christians as people who had this literary, fluid understanding of the Bible as a piece of literature. That they were just oh so comfortable with literary tropes and allegory that we, in today's age, just don't get it... but there's no real evidence to back that up. 

There is a written record that educated Christians in the past were comfortable with a variety of types of expression. As were those non-Christians who interpreted Greek myths, etc. 

I don't say that "we, in today's age, just don't get it." That would be too broad. I think that many people don't get it, and it makes sense to point out to people who read too simply that the tradition includes non-literal interpretation. 

Evidence tells us that early Christians had a dynamic understanding of the scripture and that dynamic understanding included taking many parts quite literally and even treating some parts of the Bible as historical record and direct commands from god.

Yes, thank you, I think this is right. I've said this before. 

Some parts were read literally, and other parts not. The Bible is an anthology by many authors with different goals and different methods.  Working out which is which requires using one's brain, and some knowledge of hermeneutics. That is all.