Does your organized religious group have a list of what is a literal & symbolic translation of religious text?

Question

I'm just curious whether or not your own organized religion has a list of what is a literal and what is a symbolic translation of your own religious text. Sure no existing religion translates their scripture as wholly literal or wholly symbolic, but do they have an actual list of what is translated a specific way or is it just open to personal (or inter-organizational) translation within your specific house of worship? Also, who decides what in your religious scripture was suppose to be literal and what was suppose to be symbolic? By what criteria did they use?

Please no jokers, I'm quite serious in trying to understand all of this. Thank you.

arewethereyet: How can you say that when your own last question on Yahoo Answers was for a clarification on Proverbs? The Bible is an incredibly difficult book to understand even for the most intelligent of people. Interpretation by lay individuals can only lead to mass differences in understanding, comprehension, and beliefs.

Your last question on Yahoo Answers is exactly why I asked my question. I would really like to know whether or not your religion has a list of how they interpret specific parts of the Bible as literal or symbolic.

Answer 1

No, but since most of us are fairly intelligent, we're able to determine that when Jesus says "the House of God is like a man who...." and know that is an analogy, and when He says "I would that you love one another" that is literal.

Answer 2

I doubt Christianity has such a list as that. Christians believe every thing in the bible is to be taken literal, though nearly all it writes are metaphors. All of Jesus' miracles were simply metaphors for his raw power among his followers, Noah's age when he "built the ark" (500 years) is a metaphor of respect, et cetera.

Originally there was an assembly known as the Council of Nicaea, which voted on what should go in the bible and what should be left out (namely, every gospel that portrayed Jesus as a mere mortal was left out), and they sat and voted on everything about Christianity, from dates to a story's details.