The Bible. Literal vs. Figurative?

Question

I am doing a project for school, where you have to chose ANY topic, and write a basic essay on how you support your thesis. You are suposed to get other peoples opionions, and show your response.


So I am pretty much writing about how I think the Bible was writen based on how you should act morally, rather than writen as some sort of a law to follow.

Can I get opinions?

Answer 1

for morals it takes rules
some symbolism in Bible but they did see future in visions

Answer 2

What's that expression...Many times we do not see the forrest for the tress, or something like that?

The Bible, it is a forrest. The individual books that make up the Bible, they are the trees that make the forrest.

The Bible is not a single book. A Bible is library of books. The Bible as a whole is worth more than the sum of it's parts.

You have to examine the origins of each individual Bible Book, if you want to understand the BIble. The Bible Books emcompass every literary form known to man. It contains non-fictional historical accounts (accurate, too). There is historical fiction, there is poetry, proverbs, a style of writing known as "apocalypse". Long story short, each book is different. Therefore, to classify the entire Bible as in need of being interpreted either literally or figuratively, is to miss the whole point of the Bible.

When you pick up a modern book, whatever it is, you have to know - before hand - whether it is fiction or non-fiction. You have to know who the author is, and have a vague idea of the general point that the book as a whole is trying to get across. The point is, you need to possess at least a minimum of knowledge ABOUT a book before you actually begin reading the book itself, otherwise you will be lost.

I can best illustrate this point with a newspaper. You see the front page with the headline, "Man gunned down by police offier outside bank during an attempted robbery." You know you are supposed to take this headline literally.

Now let's say you flip over to the sports page, and that headline, "Man gunned down at homeplate by shortstop during attempt to score run." Obviously, you know you're supposed to take this headline figuratively.

You burry this paper in time capsule, and it's openned 2,000 years from now. People, who are not familiar with baseball are going to think it was a violent game, that is - unless they learn something about the game first.

As if reading the Bible iself wasn't complicated enough, right? You have to learn something of each individual Book seperately BEFORE you read the Book itself. Depending on the intended message of the Divine Author, and the literary style chosen by the human author, you will have to figure out whether or not the individual book should be interpreted literally or figuratively. This might change as you go from Book to Book.

Those are my thoughts.

Answer 3

Some say the Bible was written by God. I have always wondered if he wrote it and dropped it on Earth, or if he dictated the words to someone or what.

The Bible was written by men, and written by Jesus disciples years after he was crucified. After years, memories can be remembered not so well...

The Bible has been translated over and over and over again in so many different languages. A lot is lost on a translation. For example, the aztecs had no word for soul, how do you explain what the soul is? You use a word similar that might explain things better. How many words in a translated Bible are words changed so we could understand them?

And of course, the translator can always understand things a bit differently and express what he understood in his translations.

The Bible was also written at a time where reading and writting were not accessible to everyone, just a selected few who were educated on other topics as literature and philosophy. IMHO the Bible was written for educated people, not us common folk.

I think the Bible was meant to be read in a figurative way; and I also think it is a great book that not everyone is prepared to understand.

Answer 4

The Bible is a collection of literature. There are laws of interpretation that are applied to every peice of literature such as contextualization, rules of language and grammer, cultural elements, etc. to determine how the author intended the reader to take it. The truth is, those same principles are applied easily the peices of literature that make up the Bible, and it becomes quite clear what is meant figuratively and literally. I've studied quite a bit in this area and have found the Bible to be far less confusing than many would like us to believe. The reason that people like to claim that it is impossible to know what should be taken literally is that many people despise the notion that they would be expected to sumbit their lives to a higher authority, even if that meant ultimate happiness and a peace of mind. It isn't that it's impossible to know the difference in the Bible. The real hang up is spiritual, not intellectual.

Answer 5

The New Testament was definitely written as something that the authors truly believed, and wanted others to believe as well. Read the first chapter of the first epistle of John (not the gospel of John), and look at all the times he uses the phrase "which we have seen with our very own eyes, heard with our very own ears" etc. Luke's gospel begins with something like, "after having carefully investigated everything from the source, it seemed also good to me to write an accurate account of the things that have been fulfilled among us"

Anyway, some of the Bible is figurative, but the message is meant to be literally true. For instance Matthew 1:1, the very first verse in the New Testament, is figurative. "A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham". Now we know this is not literally true, David was not the father of Jesus and Abraham was not his grandfather. However, in context, what the author is trying to say is literally true. Jesus was of David's bloodline and as so was heir to the kingdom of Israel, and he was also the promised seed of God's covenant with Abraham.

Also the parables are figurative. A merciful king, bad and good weeds, its all figurative, but the message it is transmitting is meant to be literally true.

Answer 6

Originally, it WAS written to be law (Numbers, Deuteronomy, etc. in particular). Simple when it's a relatively small nation/set of tribes, with the same background.
A literal interpretation became less & less applicable the more exposure it got, and now, when there are Jews & Christians all over the world who have the Bible as their primary religious text, it really is more of guideline as to how to act morally, like you say, simply because the situation is different across the centuries as well as across continents, and what worked so well in Palestine, 5th century BC, will not work in Brazil, 21st century AD.

Answer 7

I think you are correct to a point. The Bible gives us guidelines as to how we are to live and also tells us the consquences for our not living as we should. I had a teacher who put it basically this way...."There are 636 case laws in the Old Testament summed up by the 10 commandments. The 10 commandments are summed up by Jesus as 'love God and love man.' Those are summed up by love."

The only problem I see with your point is that your morals and my morals may not be the same. What you view as good I may view as wrong and legalistic. Then talking about morals opens more cans of worms. Ie...if we were left alone with no rules would we live morally? I doubt it. Sounds like a great project though.

Answer 8

The bible is history that means its a mixture fact and self serving propaganda. Good and evil are subjective every society defines them differently. Heaven was the place god came from, Hell was invented in the dark ages and is not mentioned in the bible. In twenty-first century terms God was an alien, what kind and from where has still to be determined.

Answer 9

The Bible was written as a guide for people. It tells stories of customs and laws of the times as well as "rules" if you will for us to follow who want to live for Christ and be in Heaven for eternity. Some say the Bible is simply a story book and that it's totally fiction. I don't believe that at all. I believe the Bible is the true and perfect word of the Living God and I believe if people will read it, they will find it guides them thru life's situations and issues. I believe those that think it's fiction will find themselves wishing they would have changed their minds one of these days and believed it. I believe it is literal and true and direction from the Living God to do what we need to do.

Answer 10

The Bible is a book written for man by man about God. Men wrote, men voted on it, men edited it and put it in binding. It was never meant to be the center of any religion, it was meant as a text to organize Christianity beyond what it had been. A lot of those gospels had been handed down over generations by word of mouth. Mistakes were made because man isn't perfect.
They are stories to teach lessons, just like all of mythology is. I am sure there is a lot of very real history in there, but its meant as a guideline. Your heart spoken to by the Divine's, in their case Christ is what the religion is SUPPOSED to be about. That seems to have been forgotten over the centuries.

Answer 11

The New Testament is mostly propaganda. The political/religious movement was in rebellion against the Roman Empire and eventually took it over, not unlike the Bolsheviks taking over Russia.

Both were brutal to their enemies as soon as they achieved a position of power and both altered their history to make themselves look like saints and visionaries. Both outlawed open questioning of official doctrine in order to hide their lies and to prevent rebellion.

History is written by the winners.

Also, there really isn't much difference between the propaganda placed in the mouth of Jesus and the official proclamations of Augustus Caesar. The Christians had no issue with the Romans until Caligula and Nero declared themselves gods.