Define literal vs non-literal.

There are many occasions when reading through the threads here that I come across this sentence:"Well that's obviously not to be taken literally - it was just a dream/song/interpretation that had at the time"When reading the bible, what are the rules around what is to be taken literally, and what is not?Are there any rules?

Thread copied here from the Define literal vs non-literal. thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.

...and surprisingly, in an attempt to agree on the meaning of the word "literal" we STILL can't agree.I think it means "the simplest most unadorned meaning of a word" - if you need to "interpret" the word in any way, then that's not literal.this to me means that taking the phrase "god created the world in six days" means (if taken literally) that the amount of time is equal (more or less) to six actual days now.JRTjr doesn't agree and says that because the word "day" is used with multiple meanings (as in "in the days of") that a "literal" meaning can be longer than what we'd call a day - something I'd call "non literal".But rather than put words in his mouth, I think he can say it himself better.

There is a set of guidelines for Literalistic interpretation.
If you don't believe the entire Bible is "God Breathed" then you generally don't use this methodology:Take what you read and consider it in the context of the sentence before it and the one after it.
Then the paragraph before it and the one after it.
Then the Book in order before it, and the one after it.In other words, the procedure assumes that the Bible explains itself fully and REQUIRES no additional outside information for full understanding. It doesn't exclude outside sources. Just that none are required.

A non-literal reading of the Bible works like this: you read the Bible and then say it means what you thought it means before you started.A literal reading of the Bible works likes this: you read the Bible and then say it means what you thought it means before you started.The only difference between the two methods is that one of them claims it reads the Bible "literally". Seriously, have a look at any apologetics site or any of the handwavy explanations of why contradictions in the Bible aren't. There are no actual literalists, only people who claim to be literalists while actually introducing masses of their inventions into the Bible and ignoring anything that they don't like.

You might believe that this is the right way to read the Bible, but I cannot see how it's a definition of what it is to read something literally.Even assuming that by reading the Bible alone, and without reference to knowledge extrinsic to it, I would learn enough about human and avian anatomy and the limits of the biologically possible to interpret what is meant by the phrase "thou hast doves' eyes", is it not clear that the correct interpretation would in fact be non-literal?

So it has nothing to do with what the word "literal" actually means?

Dude, I have no idea.I've been trying to figure it out but there's no concensus.I figure it would mean that the words' literal definitions are to be used. But I've been told that's not the case. You have to interpret it... and somehow still be literal I don't get it.

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ABE:Quick google search say that reading literally is reading it as what the authors intended it to say.But there's no rules or anything on how to actually go about doing that.And it changes from interpretation to interpretation.I don't think reading the Bible literally is just one thing, but actually a catch all term for people who want to hold it up high as something more than a book.Edited by Catholic Scientist, : No reason given.

You have taken a phrase out of context.
My FIRST interpretation,
the one that will give me the most insight,
is to assume "the speaker" is talking to "a dove " and I may not yet know what a "Dove" is. (I don't know what a "Turtle Dove" is. )I will assume the speaker is talking to a dove until I read the content before and the content after the phrase. But holding
on to the most literal interpretation of the content will always
reveal more about what is intended, than automatically dismissing the most obvious meaning and jumping on to
"What ANY idiot can see is the REAL meaning, especially in light of....":
The modern age
Modern Man
What I read in a forum
What I heard on TV
A Law that was passed
What I heard on the radio
What they say at TalkOrigins.com
What the Newspaper said this morningIf you go the OTHER way, the process is the same.
What is that word in the Greek?Where is that Greek word used and what did that Greek word
mean in the other places it was used. Same process. Start from where you are and work outwords.Now, If you assume the bible is a collection of stories from 40 authors, handed down by word of mouth over countless generations until the original story is completely reshaped, then its natural to question each sentence and assume it's only vaguely related to the original intent and immediately begin guessing at its actual meaning.Sorry, I didn't really answer your question. Maybe. I don't know the context. Even then, it won't qualify as "a fact."When the plain sense of Scripture makes common sense, seek no other sense; therefore, take every word at its primary, ordinary, usual, literal meaning unless the facts of the immediate context, studied in light of related passages and axiomatic and fundamental truths, indicate clearly otherwise. (David L. Cooper, The World’s Greatest Library Graphically Illustrated. Los Angeles: Biblical Research Society, 1970)-Sky-Edited by Sky-Writing, : No reason given.Edited by Sky-Writing, : No reason given.

When you assert that the whole Bible has to be used as context, it is hard for me to do anything else. In other words, your immediate response to the passage is that you don't think the the word dove should be taken literally as meaning a dove --- a bird of the family Columbidae. That is a non-literal interpretation which I confess had not occurred to me. ... but that dove doesn't mean dove ... But in this case the first non-literal interpretation that popped into your head is not the "most literal interpretation" nor the interpretation that reveals most about what is intended. It's Hebrew, and in other contexts it means dove. If you assume that it's the unaltered word of God, it's still fairly natural to try to figure out what it means. But this is not what you have done. So far from taking the word "dove" at its "primary, ordinary, usual, literal meaning", you have leaped to the conclusion that it doesn't mean dove.Meanwhile I, while taking the word "dove", to mean "dove", am reading the whole phrase as a metaphor.And Cooper, so far from advocating rigid literalism, is merely saying that literalism should be the default assumption. Which is fair enough.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

It comes down to the meaning of the original word and the context of the passageIn the case of 'God created the earth' its a literal statment about a physical thing. But the '6 days' aspect is dependent on the original meaning of the word 'day'...in hebrew the word used can mean any length of time so it shouldnt be taken as a literal 24 hour day as we know it. We have to consider it in the context of the original word.Also the context of the passage should be taken into account. Is the writer claiming to have seen a vision or to have witnessed an actual event or to be prophecying a future event?If you look at the book of Revelation, right at the outset the Apostle John says "I saw a vision of things presented in signs" These 'signs' are symbols of something literal, but the sign he saw itself was not literal. EG he saw the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse. Those men on horses were not literal but they were symbols that represented something literal.So context and original word meanings is what determine literalness. Edited by Peg, : No reason given.

can you back up that assertion?I mean, we use the word "day" in what I would call a "poetic fashion" all the time ; "in the days of old", "in my day we...", and so on.That's a valid use, a literary use, but it's not "literal" unless you boneheadedly believe the word literal to mean "written down" when it doesn't mean "simplest, most unadorned meaning".If the hebrew word "day" could be any length, how WAS it defined? Can you show me?

It depends on one's definition of literal. For many 'fundamentalists' and those who debate them, I think literal often refers to the degree to which a group of events in a story corresponds to some reality, whether realized or yet to come. As such, the rules usually revolve around several things: Unfortunately, most of these things are either non-objective or after-the-fact criteria, which makes it impossible to judge many of the more controversial writings as intended to be literal or not so intended. For this reason, I do not find the usual understanding of the term literal to be sufficient at all - at least in regards having any useful meaning toward constructive debate.A more useful way to conceive of literalness, I think, is to consider all parts as being literal in as much as they say what they say and each word means what it means; that is, instead of labeling a particular passage as literal only, figurative only, or literal and figurative, we simply read everything as it literally is, and use more meaningful terminology to discuss interpretation, such as relevance, realism/realisticness, etc. This way, I think much confusion would clear up and more constructive debate could ensue.JonEdited by Jon, : No reason given.

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"Can we say the chair on the cat, for example? Or the basket in the person? No, we can't..." - Harriet J. Ottenheimer

the hebrew word YOM is used in a variety of ways even within the one passage.Gen 1:5 says And God began calling the light Day, but the darkness he called NightSo even in genesis we see that Yom (day) does not mean a literal 24 hours....the 'light' was called day...the light being 12hours duration.Then in Gen 2:4 we see the entire period of creation, each of the six creative days including the creation of the universe/heavens, is called 1 day
4This is a history of the heavens and the earth in the time of their being created, in the day that God made the heaven AND earth'This should show every YEC that genesis does not attempt the describe the earth as being created in a literal 6 days. We have to understand it in the context of the hebrew language, not our own english.the hebrews didnt recon time according to hours anyway. They began their 'day' at sunset and there is no indication that the Hebrews used hours in dividing up the 'day' until after the Babylonian exile. The word hour found in the King James Version is translated from the Aramaic word 'sha`ah′, which, literally, means a look and is correctly translated as a moment.This is what i mean when i say that the context, hebrew language and even their customs has to be taken into consideration before arriving at any conclusions as to the literalness of any given text. Edited by Peg, : No reason given.

I'll ignore the fact it doesn't mention duration - just divides the two types of time period into the colloquial usage, but this isn't a problem OR the solution for literalists, surely? It would appear that the colloquial term for "the period of time when it's light" is "daytime" and the period of darkness is "nighttime", but we already know that? Now we have the first of two obvious meanings of the word "day" - "that bit of time when it's light". I can take that literally with no problem. Now, what's the key, crucial and decisive piece of information you're using that shows in any way that "the day that God made the heaven AND earth" isn't meant to be taken in the non-literal "in the days of" sense?I see it used "poetically", I don't see the reasoning behind saying "oh, well, a day can now mean a week!"I'm not saying it's not possible, I don't see the proof. I know YEC's use that to bolster their argument, but I don't see the beef. This is more like it, but doesn't change anything - it only highlights that they didn't have something, not that what they had was so fluid that you can call "a day" a billion years or so and still call it "literal".Can you show me "day" being used in a clearly non-poetic, literal fashion to mean something other than one of the two standard, obvious uses (namely "DAYtime" and "~24 hours")?