And Hells come back to haunt me

[Brakeman]

Funny you should mention "salad" as this is what a Lexicon says about it:

Outline of Biblical Usage
I.a kidney

II.kidneys, loins

A.used of the inmost thoughts, feelings, purposes, of the soul


But anyways, I still find it amusing that atheists tend to stick to a literal reading, it leads to good stuff.

How would that start to become understood metaphorically? What quality of the kidneys were chosen to embody the meaning that the writer wanted to communicate? When an author chooses to use a metaphor there is a quality that one intends to communicate. For example, the metaphor "the "rock" of ages", makes sense since the rock is hard, strong, and unmoving, which is what the writers wanted to convey with that sentence. "The sock of ages" makes no sense as there is no quality of a sock that a writer would be intending to portray. So what about a kidney was the writer or jesus trying to convey to the bible audience? If a metaphor is created it must have a origin and a basis for that origin.

The origin of our common "feelings in your heart" metaphor originates from the ancient belief that the heart was the center of feeling. In the same way, the ancients actually believed that the mind and soul resided in the kidneys. So whether or not we use it as a metaphor today is beside the point, originally it was the scientific thought of the day. It was simply ignorant and wrong, but jesus forgot to tell the ignorant gospel writers about the correct science. Dumb jesus!