killinghurts writes:
When reading the bible, what are the rules around what is to be taken literally, and what is not?
Are there any rules?
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:
i. the plausibility of the story
ii. potential or existing evidence for the story
iii. religious significance of the story
iv. personal preferences
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.
Jon
Edited by Jon, : No reason given.
"Can we say the chair on the cat, for example? Or the basket in the person? No, we can't..." - Harriet J. Ottenheimer
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