Biblical illiteracy

[Jacob(smooth)]

I wouldn't want to venture an opinion on what are the most essential concepts for a Christian to understand. Who am I to judge? Speaking personally, I wouldn't say it's at the core of my faith. One of my closest friend is a jehovahs witness and we've been arguing about the divinity of Jesus for 10 years. To me she exhibits all the significant" fruits of the spirit" so I would not opine that here doctrinal differences on this strongly affect her Christianity.

Okay, so then what is your position on who Jesus was/is? Do you beleive that he was a man, God, son of God, all three at the same time ... or what?

Would you mind if I redirect you? I cracked off a thread called "most important reason I'm a xtian" because someone asked me that on another thread. Rather than derail this thread on biblical illiteracy, if you want to know my personal theology, it's there (although I'm sure I don't know why anyone would be interested!).

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What makes one 'biblically-literate'?

I don't agree with the idea that being 'biblically-literate' involves agreeing with a single word of it. There's no such thing as an objectively-correct interpretation of a book which is both fictional and vague in so many ways. To read it literally and without accepting any of it as factual is, arguably, the most correct way to read it. To read it with the assumption that any of it is factual is faulty, because so little of it has been determined to be factual, and accepting the main premise without proper justification will only lead to you accepting others with a similar lack of justification.

Interesting angle!

I would say that biblical literacy involves knowing what it says, without reference to ones view on what it says means. If I could recite the whole book from Genesis to revelation, verbatim I would consider myself highly Biblically literate, whether I believed it was a literal account or whether I believed it to be a Harry Potter type fairytale.

I agree that since some bits of it are evidently erroneous unless one twists and reinterprets the literal meanings, there is no validity to the position that all of it must be taken literally. Equally just because some of it is untrue does not follow that none of it is true.