There are no answers in Genesis

[The Architect Of Fate]

Once a guy told me he couldn't read the Bible because there was no reliable algorithm to tell him how to do it. I suspect he may have been a cyborg.

Ah, so you have a reliable method of interpreting the bible then?  One that can make clear uncontroversial distinctions between literal and non-literal elements? You don't do you? Then I highly suggest you hush up about criticizing people for finding the text confusing...

[Deesse23]

Yes asking Christians to use literalism in a consistent manner. Is such a terrible slight against atheists ......

I don't think the comments above prove what you think it does .....

I would suggest that you broaden your perspective. Any given text is profound to the extent that it can meaningfully  speak to the various inconsistent circumstances of Mankind across time and space.

Stop bullshitting and start explaining to the uneducated plebs, what the figurative meaning of Genesis is.

[Angrboda]

It occurs to me that we no longer need the bible, now that we have Neo. We can end all the ecclesiastical wars, arguments, schisms, and issues with translation as we now have an unimpeachable source of correct interpretation of God's works. Since the bible and man and the world are all God's works, by interpreting any one of them, we should arrive at the same God. So if the bible is problematic, we have a unified and atomistic understanding of God which need only depend upon what Neo thinks. Screw Aquinas, and Augustine, and the prophets, and the disciples, and even Jesus himself -- they're now obsolete, as we now have Neo!

[Ranjr]

I see Genesis 5 as a metaphor of the lies crusty academics tell themselves in order to believe they add value to contemporary discourse.

[Jehanne]

I would suggest that you broaden your perspective. Any given text is profound to the extent that it can meaningfully  speak to the various inconsistent circumstances of Mankind across time and space.

Stop bullshitting and start explaining to the uneducated plebs, what the figurative meaning of Genesis is.

Also explain why the text of Genesis underwent redactions, changes and edits over the centuries before settling on its final form circa 150 BCE?

[Angrboda]

I don't know the answer to this question, so I'll just throw it out there for anyone to answer. Can a case be made from pre-first-century Talmud that the old testament should be interpreted along lines similar to Neo's, that it is more allusion and metaphor, a spiritual message consisting primarily of pseudo-historical accounts that function as allegory first, and as history second?

[Ranjr]

I don't know the answer to this question, so I'll just throw it out there for anyone to answer.  Can a case be made from pre-first-century Talmud that the old testament should be interpreted along lines similar to Neo's, that it is more allusion and metaphor, a spiritual message consisting primarily of pseudo-historical accounts that function as allegory first, and as history second?

I can't answer because I don't know what pre-first-century Jew to read.  But it bears noting that we have a major contributor from the 1st whom I believe to be an influence on Christianity in Philo of Alexandria.  He wrote volumes on allegorical interpretation of Genesis.  It's very interesting and preciously naive.  I'm a huge fan.  From Philo, you get the impression that the first step toward finding "a son of God," which is how he described the Logos, is to stop thinking of Genesis as mere history.

Philo of Alexandria

[Jehanne]

If Genesis is allegorical, so what? Doesn't make it supernaturally inspired.

[Deesse23]

Stop bullshitting and start explaining to the uneducated plebs, what the figurative meaning of Genesis is.

Also explain why the text of Genesis underwent redactions, changes and edits over the centuries before settling on its final form circa 150 BCE?

As Angrboda already hinted at: If anything can be figurative in the bible, why not the existence of god? Its maybe just a metaphor for........pick and choose.

[arewethereyet]

From the time I was very young, I saw the Bible stories as being quite similar to Aesop's Fables. Stories to teach a lesson. I didn't buy into the Bible stories as reality for the same reason I didn't think grasshoppers and ants were talking to one another. I don't think I was even in school yet when I made that connection.

Never once did I think Jonah lived in the belly of a whale, never once did I think the animals marched onto a big boat two-by-two, and the list goes on.

Stories with a purpose that was not to teach historical reality. Sure, some settings were real, don't most authors draw from what is around them? Maybe not sci-fi, but you get the idea.