How much of the bible should we take literally and how do you know when it's not literal?

Answer 1

Just pick and choose which parts to take literally based on how they support/hinder your beliefs, that's what most people seem to do.

Answer 2

I think you ask a very valid question. It is not easy to answer, however. The Parables told by Jesus were stories to make a point, and are not literal. There are parts of the Old Testament that are symbolic, and parts that are literal. Deep Bible study with help from the Holy Spirit leads to discernment. The best Bible study I have ever been in is a non-denominational world wide study called Bible Study Fellowship.

I will always be a student of the Bible, and will always learn about my Lord until the day we meet!

Answer 3

The basic principle when it comes to interpreting the Bible is to interpret it to say what the author intended it to say. If you were the one the letter, book, or whatever was addressed to, how would you take what is said?

Take, for example, the book of Daniel. There are several parts of it: some of it is just history, stories of things that happened; some of it includes letters from the King fo Babylon to the nations under his rule; some of it contains the dreams Daniel had from God. The history are exactly that: what happened. The letters are again pretty straight forward: when the King says sit, you sit, or your head comes off. The dreams are a little more complicated.

But the clue is not to take it as though the book is addrssed to you here in the 21st century, but to take it the way those it was addressed to would take it, which does make for some complication. For example, it was considered normal practice in some ancient cultures to record the reign of Kings in a length given in years, but the number actually indicated how many battles he won, or how righteous he was, or was multiplied by some constant. In this way, the reader of that day would know exactly what "he lived 1000 years after being crowned" meant. (It meant he was a really righteous king, or that he had lived 10 years, or that he had 100 successful campaigns against his neighboring tribes.) I believe that the ages given in the first half of Genesis are literal, but if someone found Seth's birth and death cirtificates, and it turned out he was only 25, that wouldn't be a problem for me: it would just mean that Moses had recorded the dates that gave some other meaning rather than literal birth and death dates.

So, with that in mind, when you read a story about the trees choosing a King, read it in the same light you would read one of Aesop's fables. But when you read that there were a hundred witnesses to Jesus's resurection, read that like a first century believer who could actually ask the people who saw him what they saw.

Answer 4

While certain events and conflicts can be used as markers, against which history can be measured, to place them relative to known history, many of the details are purely conjuectual. Conversations, motivations, and -of course - divine intervention could easily, and likely was, an invention of the author or a later editor.

There are numerous reasons to read a section, and discount it as allegory. Obviously, contradictory information is not literal. If Adam and Eve were the first people, where did the wives of Cain and of Seth come from? If everyone except the family of Noe dies in the flood, why list the geneoloty of Cain, as they will all die in the flood? If the flood destroys all life not on the ark, then how did animals native to other continants survive? These examples are from the first ten chapters alone.

In the New Testament, the first lines of the first Gospel, Matthew, lay out a clear geneology, from Joseph to David, to Babylonian captivity, to Joseph (the carpenter who marries Mary, the mother of Jesus). Despite the fact that Joseph is not the father of Jesus, the gospel of Matthew makes careful effort to develop his geneology, complete with the notation concerning three groupings of 14 generations. Obviously, the original intent of Matthew was not to present a miracle birth, but to grant legitimacy to the lineage of Jesus within the family of Joseph. Later editors assigned the virgin birth. Again, plainly evident in the first lines.

Answer 5

Many fundamentalist Christians believe that the Bible should be taken literally, word for word.

The official Catholic position (I think) is that the Bible is meant as a statement of Faith, not a history book. It is true, strictly speaking, but not exact, if that difference makes sense.

For example, the Creation story. Many fundamentalists are Young Earth Creationists, meaning that they believe that the earth was literally created in 7 days, as the bible said, and that the Earth is only about 10,000 years old (tracing the geneological statements in the Bible). Catholics, by comparison, are free to understand the 7 day narrative as a storytelling or ordering device helping the earliest people understand and remember the order of the creation of the world, not necessarily its timeline, and can thus be made compatible with scientific understandings of the origins of Earth and life thereon.

Answer 6

Many people consider an answer like the one I'm about to give you a "copout" or "not an original thought."

However, it is not only an answer but the answer: Pray to God to clarify these things for you. Before and/or after you read his Word, pray that he guide you in understanding it.

So many folks make these charges about the Bible's being written by people, edited by people, translated by people. Yes, people did write down the divinely directed words. Yes, people did translate from the Aramaic, from the Coptic, from the Greek, from the Latin, et al. People are the ones that leave documents behind them. The only "documents" that God physically "left" were the stone tablets. All else was written by divinely guided people.

Everything that some people complain about, in other words, is for the most part true. Yet these issues being true, they do neither elucidate nor "discredit" the Truth that is the Bible.

And there is only one way to know this...only one way in the world: ask for and then receive the gift of faith. Faith clears up all questions. Perhaps not overnight, but in time. God has answered so many of the questions I had. God, not people. And the only "proof" I have is the evidence that the clarity did not come from my inside own mind but beyond it. And what kind of proof is that to you or anybody else? It is my word, but what is my word to you or anybody else?

If you--or anyone else--wants to know what God is saying and how/why he is saying it, ask God. Yes, people can add some insights, but they cannot elucidate certain things that only become crystal when one has faith.

Answer 7

There's no clear-cut answer here. Christian fundamentalists are more likely than any other Christian group to interpret most of the Bible literally. However, this doesn't always work. Fundamentalists often criticize Roman Catholics for believing that during the Eucharist, they're actually eating the body and drinking the blood of Christ. It doesn't work out, because Jesus said during the institution of the Eucharist, "Eat this bread, for it is my body, and drink this wine, for it it my blood...". Fundamentalists interpret this verse symbolically, but still believe Genesis is the exact, unedited story of creation. You can ask 100 different Christians this question and get a different answer from all 100 of them. I think it's up to the believer what verses to believe as literal truth, and the others as a symbolic message.

Answer 8

You just can't read the bible like it is a newspaper. You will not find who, what , when, where and how like a factual account. You must first of all find out the original audience it was written for and what there culture entailed. Then when compared with contemporary non-religious literature you can better understand colloquial expressions and word usage of the time. The main thrust of the bible is to reveal the nature of God and it was done in many different literary forms.

Answer 9

How do I know when not to take something literally. I know, it's hard to believe that it's logic when you don't believe that religion is logical. I'm sure my logic has failed me in religion just as frequently as it has in the class room. My logic is a composite of my experiences. Everyone has different experiences and their logic is going to be different. It would be foolish, to me, to expect that one other person let alone a whole world of people could possibly come to the same conclusions that I do. It is easy for some to dismiss the Bible, I think, because it is called "the word of God", when it was quite obviously written by men. I think many would believe that Socrates was a great philosopher. History shows that he was persecuted as a religious heretic. How many people actually know that Socrates never wrote a single one of his philosophies down. Nearly every philosophy he ever, supposedly, spoke, was written by Plato, with Plato's logic and emotions affecting it. That doesn't mean that the ideas should be tossed aside, just that they ought to be left to as much interpretation as the author himself used when the information was recorded.

Answer 10

Look at the "internal evidence." Some of the Bible is written as poetry; so read it as you would read poetry. Some of the Bible is written like a historical account, with occasional references to witness or descriptions of an individual's experience. Read this as you would read a historical document. Some is written like a "short story" without reference to historical events; this is a kind of literature which gives a spiritual or moral message. There is no part of the Bible that written like science, though there are observations about the natural world.

Answer 11

It's to be taken ALL literally...but as it says in Timothy, you have to rightly divide it. Otherwise, you'll be thinking that when Christ is talking to the jews, he's talking to you, and when Paul is speaking to the Romans, he's only talking to the jews, and this was for then, but not now, and it'll be a catastrophic mess.

The book of Genesis through John is all under Jewish Law, written for the Jews. Christ doesn't die for every single person's sins until the end of those books. Galatians 4:4 even talks about him coming to earth under Jewish law.

The book of Romans through Philemon is written for the Body of Christ, the group called within the world today, whether they were once jews, gentiles, men, women, servants, free, to get the Word out to everyone that Christ has now paid for everybody's sin debt and that he's our substitute, and we're now presented blameless, holy, etc. to God. We're no longer enemies to God, nor seen as enemies to him when sin arises, thanks to Christ.

The Book of Hebrews through Revelation is written for a future time, when the Antichrist reigns over the earth, the body of christ has been raptured into the heavens, and all that's left on earth are Hebrew Christians, set out to proclaim God's infalliable word.

That's how you know HOW to take the bible literally so that you can understand NONE of it is "not literal". Anything else..... is just total mass confusion. And you'll see it in some of the other answers.

All scripture is for us. But not all scripture is TO us, or ABOUT us.