For believers: How much of the Bible is figurative vs. literal? How do you decide what to believe in?

Question

For example:

Was Jesus Christ really born from a virgin?
Did Jesus really raise Lazurus from the dead or was he mistakenly thought dead?
Did Jesus really come back to life after the crucifixion?
Did Jesus really part the Red Sea?

And other questions like this...

Sorry about the Red Sea bit. But for those who believe these things, why do you believe? Is there documented proof that these things happened?

I just want to say that I do believe in God, but i'm questioning some aspects of the Bible and Christianity just because there doesn't seem to be a lot of documented proof that these things actually occurred.

Answer 1

It is all figurative. If it was full of "Thou shalt not's", it would get kind of preachy, so the authors created a bunch of allegories to spice things up a little!

Answer 2

There are some great documentaries about what can actually be proven as factual occurances in the Bible. There is very little recorded knowledge about Jesus himself. The stories in the Bible were written hundreds of years after his death and not even written by the people for whom they are named (ie: Mathew, Mark, Luke, John etc.) There are many more gospels that were left out by the framers the Bible, like the gospel of Thomas. These were discovered in the dead sea scrolls.
Pesonally, I think God is much to smart to only speak to Christians who follow the Bible literally. He speaks also through
Buddah, Confussius, Ghandi and a million less known people who preach love. That, I believe, is the true message of Jesus Christ. I try not to get caught up in all the particulars and focus instead on loving each other only. I believe God wants us each to find our own path to Him rather than follow someone else's interpretation of his words.
As to your particular questions, I believe that things that don't happen in life today didn't happen back then. I don't believe in a virgin birth or raising people from the dead or Jesus coming back to life. I do find that there is some evidence that the Red Sea at low tide would allow Moses' people to cross while high tide would have prevented their pursuers from doing so.
Just remember those who followed Jesus during his time were eager to promote him as the son of God in order to build a following. I believe if everyone were to follow the example set by Christs' love the world would be a much better place, but the details don't really matter.
peace and love to you,
john

Answer 3

I think nobody knows what is figurative and what is literal, it's only difference by faith and common sense... it's difficult to say what can be real, because, at list in catholic bible, we know the four Evangelia were written at least 1 century after Christ until 6 centuries later, as Matthew's Evangelia... and we know also, that in some Vatican Councils were treaten those texts, to make them 'easier', so who knows, you must use your common sense and decide by yourself what you believe...

Answering your questions, was Jesus born from a Virgin? No, I don't think so, overall because it wasn't necessary, the Messiah, was predicted in ancient scriptures as the descent of Salomon and David, so the King of Jews (never as the God's Son).
Did Jesus raise Lazarus from dead? Maybe, why not? I have read something similar about chamans... I think we only know a little about human nature.
Did Jesus come back to life after crucifixion? As I've said, that is a question about faith, and I think that's true... (It's my faith)
Did Jesus part the Red Sea? Well, as you've said, he wasn't Jesus, He was Moises... and this is also related to your own faith, yes, why not??

Answer 4

Yes Jesus was born from a virgin
yes Lazarus was dead stinking dead and Jesus said he was a sleep this tells us when we die we go to the same place we go when we go to sleep Jesus was dead too on the Cross and yes he also rose from the dead he was on earth another forty days after his Resurrection then he went into the clouds and he will return in the clouds and no Jesus did not part the red sea that was moses put that power was given to him by God the father OK you should believe all of the Bible it is a history book of true things past it is a future book of things to come and it is a answer book for things in life now seek and you shall find ask and it shall be given to you if you first believe.

Answer 5

First, let me begin by saying that you must born again to understand the things of the Kingdom of God.
Now if you are born again then what I suggest you do is pray and ask the Holy Spirit of God to lead you and help you in understanding the Word of God as you read it and you will see things becoming clearer.
If you are not born again , then this is your oppurtunity to experince a life with Jesus who is our creatore, lord and savior. I will leave the scripture for salvation(being born again) in my sources for you.
Yes Jesus was born of a virgin, it was the spirit of God which concieved him inside of her.
Yes Jesus raised Lazurus from the dead and he did this to show proof of who he was to those that did not beleive.
Yes God raised Jesus from the dead on the 3rd day from his death and he appeared unto 2 disiples and then unto 500 believers.
And it was Moses who parted the red sea through the power God.
Now the bible is both figurative and literal, and is always profitable for teaching and correction.

Answer 6

Was Jesus Christ really born from a virgin?
Yes

Did Jesus really raise Lazurus from the dead or was he mistakenly thought dead?
Lazurus was dead and buried for a while. His own sisters were scared he'd stink, he had time to start to rot.

Did Jesus really come back to life after the crucifixion?
Yes

Did Jesus really part the Red Sea?
No. Moses did, though.

Sorry about the Red Sea bit. But for those who believe these things, why do you believe? Is there documented proof that these things happened?
The documentation is in the bible. They didn't have very good record keeping back then. There was no "Jordan Times" newspaper to report back that Lazurus rose from the dead or that Jesus came back. And I doubt the Egyptions would put in about all their slaves escaping. IT was kind of an embarrassment.

Answer 7

The stories of actual people are the true ones including the ones you wrote up above.

The only figurative stories in the bible are the parables. You can recognize these by the way the people are spoken about and how they are referred too. They usually are created in a short few verses and have a moral to the story. Names aren't mentioned in the parables. There are also prophecies and dreams that are figurative but the outlying stories usually explain the meanings of those. As for the book of Revelation, You have to be a theologian to decipher on your own what the dreams John was having meant. Best to get some type of study bible and read the footnotes and compare the footnotes to the scripture.

Answer 8

It's hard to say.

The average theogian says this part is literal, that part is figurative and that's how they teach it to children and people at the churchs.

IF, however, you mix science with Religion and are willing to take leaps of faith, then everything is literal.

I don't think Jesus parted the sea, wasn't that Moses?!

Ok. We live in what is called a Newtonian universe governed by laws of physics and gravity.

Einstein proposed other universes and described a Relatavistic way of thinking. In this Relativistic Universe Newton's laws no longer applied in the same manner or as a certainty.

Einstein said, for example, bricks could fall upward or stand still. In other words Gravity can be overcome.

Now, if that is true and God created everything including the laws of physics or at least KNOWS these laws and CONTROLS these laws as he must to create universes and people, and Jesus was his son with extra spirit and inside information, then IT IS possible to walk on water.

Not only is that possible, but JEsus, in theory, could walk on air. He could walk from one side of a cavern to another on thin air, by overcoming Newtonian gravity laws through some unknown understanding of how things work.

Raising from the dead with a touch of the hand.

You never heard of CPR.

You have a dead person on the floor and a 14 year old boy scout comes in and puts his hand on the breast plate and pushes.

Now, this is how something FIGURATIVE to those 2000 years ago becomes LITERAL today.

Which means Jesus was 2000 years ahead of his time.

God's "Plan" for everyone. We are unlocking the Genome code and this dictates when your first hair will turn gray, when this will happen, when that willhappen. It determines how tall you will get, and what your eye color will be. It also determines what skills you will be naturally good at or inclined to, such as understanding math quickly or slowly.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocolypse.

We live in a world of jets and cars and tanks, who uses horses anymore, except for fun.

However in 200 years the oil will run out! Will we master "hydrogen fusion" and fuel our cars with water by then or will be have to go back to riding horses.

If so, the Four Horsemen not longer become figurative, but can be literal.

God said, except for living forever, we were as God with the knoweldege of Good and Evil.

Jesus said everyone could do what he did.

What limits us is our fixation with the Newtonian universe.

The movie The Matrix borrowed heavily with this concept, but makes a good point.

Those plugged into the Newtonian world (the Matrix) follow and beleive in the rules. Those unplugged can bend the rules, change the rules.

This does not mean 'have faith" and leap off a building. People have tried that and died.

It is a fact of reality that when a car runs over a child and the tires are on that childs legs a mother can find it (sometimes) within her self to lift that car off his legs so others can pull him out.

There are documentations of feats like thiis attributed to biochemical flows in her body due to the reaction of seeing this.

Our body is a biochemistry lab. Eat some turkey on Thanksgiving and see if you don't get sleepy from the triptophens.

God is said to be Sprit, yet the Bible says God WALKED with Adam. Literal of Figurative?

If God and Jesus can exist both as spirt and flesh (and maybe we all can) then all things are possible.

So figurative or literal, it's hard to say.

It depends on how you view the world.

We are stuck in the Newtonian world, but maybe God is not.

Thus what is depicted in the Bible is not bound by our laws, but by God's laws.

That's the best I can tell you.

Answer 9

no, the bible has essentially already been shown to be an unreliable source.

historically it doesn't match up, and also science contradicts it as well. for example, the bible refers to bats as a type of bird and describes pi as being exactly equal to 3. it also describes the earth as flat multiple times and refers to the moon as a light source independent from the sun.

if this weren't enough, the bible also contradicts itself. in matthew 1:16, jesus' paternal grandfather is said to be jacob. yet in luke 3:23, his paternal grandfather is heli. how can we trust a book that doesn't even agree with itself???

it's been translated so many times and handled by so many people, that that alone is almost enough to dismiss it., but people insist on pushing as historically accurate when they've obviously never read it.

as for the other questions you ask, they pose problems rarely thought about. for instance, jesus was born from a virgin, then whose DNA did he have? just his mother's?? if that were the case, then he'd've been female,,,, because his mother would not've been able to offer him a Y chromosome.

if you look at everything objectively, there's really no reason to believe the bible or christianity for that matter. sadly, people continue to endorse it simply because they refuse to consider these points. it's really sad.

Answer 10

Jesus was really born from a virgin.
Jesus really did raise Lazurus from the dead.
Jesus really did conquer death and hell, and rose to be in Heaven with God the Father.
Moses was at the Red Sea, but it was parted by God as a sign to those following Moses.

Answer 11

The virgin birth is a commonly-used metaphor to symbolize the enlightenment experience (where people literally realize they're not this body). What this metaphor points to is much more dramatic than the literal interpretation of a virgin birth. The same metaphor was used for the buddha.
Jesus' resurrection is symbolic -- his message 'rose' in the disciples and they got parts of it-- enough to go out and tell the masses.
The real point of Jesus' message is that our reality is NOT bodies -- it's what everyone who has an enlightenment experience finds out. Therefore, the real miracle is that we lose our identification with our body (which also means our personality and individuality -- our psychological self). Unfortunately, because we can't think of ourself as not being this, we take the spiritual metaphors literally and make them all about our bodies (again, including our psychological selves).