Christians and atheists alike. all the parts of the bible now that we are told?

Question

'not to take literally' Do you think 500-1000 years ago we would have been not to take them literaly or is it just that religion has had to evolve as some of these stories just cannot be believed in modern times? If this is so, what else isn't true in that book?!

Answer 1

There's a great book by Bart Erhlman called (in the US) "Misquoting Jesus." Really it's a very scholarly book about how the bible has changed over time. We have copies of it from hundreds of years ago.

There are more unique (different) copies of the New Testement than there are WORDS in the New Testement.

I think as humanity gets smarter, we are able to trace back the roots of these beliefs. We can see that they're built on nothing. It's not just the stories but the scholarship behind them.

Answer 2

"Literal" as we use the term did not arise until at least the late middle ages.
And "Truth" is something else again.
Can a poem or an emotional account be more true than a bare-bones literal one? Of course it can. And more false, too.

It would take paragraphs just to approach the topic sensibly.
If you've not read it, perhaps start with:
Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature
by Erich Auerbach

Addendum: the "literal" or "non-literal" injunction would not have arisen much 500-1000 years ago for both the reason that things now seen as "non-literal" would have been taken literally, and because truth was not seen as confined to mere "literal" accounts. I don't like so phrasing this, because it is squeezing the the mindset of 1000 years ago into near modern categories, which is an inevitable distortion.
In some respects you are asking a question which was not asked at the time, as approaches to truth came in different forms.

Answer 3

This is a good point. As science and knowledge advance and society progresses, becoming less violent and primitive, we hear more and more about how we need to take certain parts of the bible as "metaphor" or "parable". The great flood story and the Jonah story come to mind. Sometimes Christians even try to arbitrarily redefine words to make the jealous and vengeful god of the bible jibe more with the modern portrayal of god as loving and merciful.
Pretty soon the superstitious are going to run out of shadows to retreat to as the light of science and reason continues to advance.

Answer 4

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Answer 5

No, i think the same stories that we do not take literally now are the same ones that were not taken literally then, such as the parables....those stories were always non-literal stories told to prove a bigger point, just as they are understood today... if you can think of a particular example of something else that may have been literal before, but is not now, it may be easier to answer your question more fully

Answer 6

What did people think before Christianity came along and rammed itself down everyone's unsuspecting throat?

Answer 7

well they were written from the cultural perspective at the time...obviously now its insanely outdated so we can't take it literally anymore. pretty much nothing in there is true anyway.

Answer 8

What is your question? Can you rephrase it so it is understandable, please?