If the Bible is metaphorical then perhaps so is the God of the Bible

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I'll rephrase then: how do Christians decide which parts of the Bible are true?

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Dogma, doctrine, and tradition determine the truth of the Bible for some Christians.
Others use reason to understand the reality behind the compilation of the Bible and the purpose of the writers.
Then there are others who ride the fence and go with the flow.Because most (I think I'm safe in saying most) Christians don't really read the Bible as a whole. The information they receive is fed to them through sermons and Bible study classes that aren't looking at the simple reading of the text, but through, what the Jews call, D'rash. IOW, they've used selective verses to teach their own point or doctrine instead of teaching what the ancient authors were trying to teach their own people.I feel that Christians have not been routinely taught or encouraged to read the writings in the Bible as whole stories.

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

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That is possible, although I've spoken to Christians who claim to have studied the Bible comprehensively and are still somehow able to differentiate between the metaphor and the literal.

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Comprehensive doesn't mean they read the stories completely as written. I've been to a few "comprehensive" Bible studies. They usually have a doctrinal theme and teach to that theme. Although they say they are looking at what the text "really" says, they tend to jump ship when it clashes with doctrine or tradition.Another issue for some Christians is that religion is a security blanket, but not necessarily for all the same reasons. They will shy away from anything that might cause them to lose that security blanket. Personally, I think some clergy exploit that aspect. Keep them needy.If you've read any of the Bible debates, you will see that when evidence doesn't coincide with doctrine, those championing doctrine will try to find their opponents personal achilles heal. Sometimes they even make one up to try and make their opponent feel guilty, ashamed, etc.Many times they can't see because they don't want to lose what they have, whether it is spiritual security, fellowship, family, etc.If you notice the doctrine of Christianity is already steeped in metaphorical phrases. These phrases are repeated over and over, but many have lost their original meaning and some don't mean a lot anymore.

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

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Not all christians view the creation account to be a metaphore.
The account does not present as such. It is a brief account of creation and of Mankinds fall from perfection. I, and many others, view it as a literal account.

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Perfect example. I would argue that you do not take the story of Adam and Eve as a literal account. I say that because in another thread you said you did not believe the tree of knowledge bestowed knowledge on the one eating of the fruit.In the thread entitled "Are We Prisoners of Sin" in Message 122 you stated: And in Message 143 you continued: So the question is what meaning of literal are you using? You don't accept that the fruit from the tree of knowledge bestowed knowledge by the eating of the fruit, but you do believe that the snake talked.

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When you say you view it as a literal account, what I hear is that you accept that the event happened exactly as written, magic and all.

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If that isn't what you mean, then please explain what allows you to believe the snake talked, but the fruit of the tree doesn't bestow knowledge.

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the same goes for the flood account. Noah is listed in Jesus genealogy presented by Mathew and Luke, as is Adam... so if they were metaphorical people, do you think they would be listed in a real persons genealogy? This shows the two accounts are to be taken literally.

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So because Adam and Noah are mentioned in two different genealogies, you feel the authors mean for readers to take the subject accounts as literal; and yet you don't appear to actually take the Adam and Eve story as literal.

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

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i believe the account of Adam and Eve and the serpent to be real people/snake. Adam and Eve were our first human parents. I beleive the garden of Eden was a real physical place where they lived with God.
Yes, we differ on the detail of exactly what the tree was/represented, but I still view the tree as a REAL tree with leaves and fruit.
No, it wasnt 'magic', it did not impart knowledge to them...it represented Gods authority and rulership and when they disobeyed and ate from it, they became rebels and alienated themselves from Gods rulership and authority. That is evident from the conversation that Eve had with the Serpent (the devil in disguise).

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But that's not taking the story literally. Do you understand that?Believing that Adam, Eve, and the garden are all real doesn't make the account real. (This concept is being discussed in the "Mythology with real places & people" thread.) If you take the whole story literally, then you would need to believe that the trees in the middle of the Garden are magic and that the snake could talk and had legs.BTW, you didn't specify what meaning of literal you are using.You said in Message 35: Not all christians view the creation account to be a metaphore.
The account does not present as such. It is a brief account of creation and of Mankinds fall from perfection. I, and many others, view it as a literal account.What you say you do and what you're doing aren't the same. Do you understand that you are not viewing the story literally if you feel the trees and snake are representative?You also said in Message 35 that since Adam was listed in the NT genealogies, that shows the account is to be taken literally.How can you claim that you take the account as literal if you don't accept that the trees were magic and the snake could talk?

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

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like I said, our interpretations of them are different. I believe they literally existed.

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Literal is a style of interpretation and you are not interpreting the story literally. As I said, believing that Adam and Eve really existed does not mean you are taking the story literally.Please clarify your usage of the word literal. Your own interpretation shows that you do not take the account literally.Example: While in the military, I was tasked with the job of writing a piece that would familiarize our recruiters with the duties and personnel of the regional admin office. I could have just written down the facts, but I didn't.The story I wrote included myself, admin personnel, detailed descriptions of their duties and their desks in come cases, and a talking mouse. Gunnery Sergeant Archibald Cheddar. He even carried a swagger stick. The people were real, the descriptions of their jobs were real, I'm real, but the way the story played out wasn't real. The premise was that while on guard duty (which I was on guard duty when I got the idea and started writing the story.) this old Marine Corps mouse took me on a tour of the admin office.If you were to accept my story literally, you would have to believe that a mouse could talk and that I was talking to a mouse. (BTW, I wasn't.) My audience understood that the people and the admin details were real, but the mouse was not. They did not take the story literally. They understood what parts were real and what parts were not.

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So its not that I dont take the accounts literally, its just that I hold to a different interpretation then you do.

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Any interpretation other than the face value of the words written is not a literal interpretation.Please provide support for your claim of literal interpretation. Here is one definition dealing with the Bible. Here is another: From these two examples, I am more literal than you are. A literal interpretation, from what I can tell, is different than taking a story literally.Right now, you would be classified as a non-literalist and my interpretations would be considered and have been considered more literal than yours.In a literal interpretation, the snake is just a snake. His talking is a literary device, just like my talking mouse. What he's saying is important.IOW, literal interpretation is related to peshat. The plain reading of the text.You on the other hand put in symbolism, allegory, etc. to make the story fit a doctrine.I still argue that you do not take the A&E story literally, nor do you present a literal interpretation.

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

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You using a metaphorical situation when saying all are descended from a God.

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Actually wouldn't we all be descended from dirt? Adam was made from dirt, literally speaking.Of course if God is a personification of nature and dirt is part of nature, then one could say we are descended from God, metaphorically speaking of course.

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Doesn't it seem clear that nature and its laws are God's creation ?

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"Before the hills and the mountains" is poetic language which should include all other items in the physical world. God was there before they came into existence, is what Psalm 90 is teaching.

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A psalm is a song of faith. The song is written by man about man's feelings, etc. towards God. Mankind at that time has no clue when things began.In the thread concerning the word erets (Not The Planet), the literal interpretation of "the earth and the world" has a smaller implication than the planet.The verse doesn't preclude God from being a personification of nature. Compared to the size of the planet, this is a small group of people describing how they perceive their portion of the planet around them. The phrase "before the hills and the mountains" can also be a poetic way to say "a really long time ago". Essentially what they are saying in the verse is that God has always been and always will be. From their perspective that is true. The planet and nature have been around as long as man can remember. If the science guys have it right, the planet and nature were around before man took the stage.The laws of nature are God's creation since God is nature. The ancients personified nature as gods. As mankind became more knowledgeable about nature and the planet, God evolved to what we have today. God lives in the realm of the knowledge that we don't know, the supernatural.God is what sustains us, nature.

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

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My position is that if the Bible is not taken literally, it can be stretched to mean anything and is therefore meaningless. I'm still interested in the question posed in the OP:

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Any writing can be stretched to mean anything. What others do with a writing doesn't negate what the original writer was saying to his audience. The problem we have is that we are not the target audience of the Bible writers; therefore the catch phrases, slang, humor, etc are lost on us. Translators do their best with a dead language, but do they already translate the slang, humor, etc. or leave the words as is and we're supposed to "get it"?Take the example I gave in Message 57. My target audience knew what was real and what wasn't.Since we aren't the target audience, we have to remember that when reading the Bible. We also have to understand that there are many authors over long periods of time that make up the Bible.The creation story in Gen 1 is written by the Priestly author who pulled the magic out of the creation story. No talking snake, no magic trees. If we try to understand the status of the society around the writer, we might understand what he was trying to convey.The same with the Adam and Eve story. It was written earlier, probably in a smaller tribal setting. It is more of a "just so" story. We can only guess what the original storyteller was trying to convey to his audience.In my example story. The mouse is not real, but the information he presented in the story was real and necessary for the target audience. For us today, the story would be useless. It might be entertaining, but the information wasn't meant for people today.So the task we have is getting past the added dogma of today to find out what real information was meant for the target audience. It might be facts or it might be a moral lesson. Jesus fought the dogma of his time, if the accounts are correct.

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To those who only take certain parts of the Bible literally, how do you determine where the metaphors end and the facts begin?

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It is difficult, since the writings are translated from dead languages, the originals have been tampered with, some stories are cut and pasted together, and people do change writings to suit their own agenda.Read the plain text, just as one would any other book. When something doesn't make sense or is obviously a figurative writing (such as poetry), adjust accordingly just like we do today.The target audience of the priestly creation story knew what the writer mean. Whether the writer meant a literal 24 hour day is irrelevant today. Our scientist have a better idea of how long it took for things to happen. So the priestly writing, as far as that fact goes, is outdated; just like my example story. It may have wowed his audience, but today, not so much.Don't confuse p'shat with d'rash.
The Rules of PARDES InterpretationIn my opinion a literal interpretation is the same as p'shat (plain or simple meaning) and according to the Talmud "No passage loses its p'shat."

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

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Choose a chapter of the Bible and I'll see if I can give you a demonstration of my rational.

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Why not start with your favorite, since it is already part of the discussion.The story of Adam and Eve.Explain which parts you take as a literal interpretation and which parts you don't. Also explain why.

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

As you can see by jaywill's post, he uses doctrine to determine what is to be taken literally, spiritually, or metaphorically. Notice his first sentence sets the tone for interpreting the writing any way one wants. From the rest of the post we can see that jaywill is a non-literalist.When we read the actual story of Adam and Eve, we need to keep in mind the target audience, which was probably around 848-722BCE. No New Testament was written yet. The priestly writing of Genesis 1 hadn't been written yet.The people gathered round to listen to a tale about how their people came to be. Why they are different than the animals. Why they know right and wrong. Why men and women come together and why women have pain in childbirth. They also find out why snakes have no legs and why man works the fields, etc.The people knew that snakes didn't talk and trees weren't magic. I also think they knew people weren't made of dirt. They would have understood the story the same way we understand the "Just So Stories" by Rudyard Kipling.Talking snakes and magic trees also shows us that the story is not a literal historical event. The story was pertinent to the people of the time. The muddy details we quibble over were irrelevant to the story.You probably won't get the answer you think you're looking for. People don't always know why they do what they do, or why they view things the way they do.When they drag in other author's to explain, they probably aren't reading the simple meaning of the text or a literal translation.Remember, a literal translation doesn't mean that a tree of knowledge literally existed. A literal translation means that the author does mean that the fruit from the tree of knowledge in his story does give Adam and Eve knowledge when they eat the fruit.

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

CarlinKnew,Richard Elliott Freidman wrote a book entitled "Who Wrote the Bible?". It deals with the Documentary Hypothesis, which is the idea that the Torah is not written by one person and was not written at the time of Moses.You might find it an interesting book.

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

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And I understand that from what you consider literal, there is no room for symbolism to be applied... eg, the tree was a literal tree and therefore was also magic because it could impart knowledge.

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It has nothing to do with what I consider literal. You saw the definitions. I didn't create those.Remember the excerpt I provided:

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But to explain why symbolism can rightly be applied to such devices, we need only to look at the system of Isreals worship and what the Christian teaching was with regard to its representation.

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When you apply symbolism, but the text doesn't indicate that the subject is a symbol, then you are forcing your ideas and meanings on the story. Which means, if you feel the Bible is God's word, what you are forcing on the text is not God's word.IOW, you aren't taking God at his word.

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Here Paul teaches that the High Priest who offered the sacrifices were a foregleam of God’s purposes to be fulfilled through the messiah, the one who would provide an everlasting sacrifice for sins.

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The author of Hebrews makes it clear that he is applying symbolism to subjects within his text. We also have to remember that Paul and the later authors are a different style of writing than the A&E story. They are in the style of sermons. They are using verses from the OT to support the point they want to make. IOW, D'rash.So when Paul, or one of those claiming to be Paul, makes a conclusion based on OT verses; I go to the source and read the plain text to see if the conclusion is valid or if the author is pulling several verses together to make a completely different point that isn't supported by the plain text reading.As I told CalinKnew, don't confuse P'shat with D'rash.

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

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or IOW that is exactly what Christianity is...its the understanding of God in the context of the Christ as taught through those chosen by Christ to teach.

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I would agree that Christianity today grew from teachings based on Paul's writings, not the actual disciples or followers of Jesus.

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If you dont accept the word of the Apostles of Christ, then you are not accepting the word of the Christ and in turn not accepting the word of God.

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I accept Paul's letters and the writings of the NT for what they were and in light of the audience they were written for.

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Paul identifies the Devil as 'the original serpent.' It was Satan who spoke through the serpent and as he said in his letter to the corinthians "I fear that as the serpent seduced Eve by its cunning YOUR minds might be corrupted"
According to Paul, the serpent seduced eve and corrupted her mind away from God.

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Please provide verses. When did Paul identify the devil as the original serpent? The verse you shared (2 Corinthians 11:3) does not identify the serpent as the devil. The plain text reading of that text and the surrounding text shows that Paul is referring to a situation within a story that people could identify with. His audience understood how the serpent misled Eve. Paul didn't want them to be skillfully misled away from his teachings.

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This is the teaching of the Apostles of Christ, not my own ideas.

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Unfortunately what you present most of the time is a mishmash of the apostles, doctrine, and your own perceptions.

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Also what is it I am saying about the tree? Where do i get the idea that the tree represented Gods authority?
Its from the Apostle Paul who says at Romans 5:19 "For just as through the disobedience of the one man many were constituted sinners, likewise also through the obedience of the one [person] many will be constituted righteous."

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God gave a command to Adam. That is the command that was disobeyed. The tree represented knowledge and that we get from the name of the tree. Paul does not refer to the tree. In the A&E story God represented God's authority.

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According to Paul the result of 'disobedience' was sin and death, just as Genesis says.
The christians didnt stray from known scripture. It was the basis of their teaching and, unlike the Jewish religious teachers, they understood it.

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Sermons are fine, they just shouldn't take away or change the plain reading of a text. The plain reading of the text should have priority.Paul is a difficult read and he doesn't rely on oneliners. He builds to a point. Remember, Paul's style of writing and arguing is Jewish, not necessarily the style we have today. If you want to discuss Paul's teachings open a thread. He's a bit too complicated for this thread.

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

One trait of a writer is to remain consistent within their own writing. The flood story doesn't do that. The Priestly writer refers to the deity as God and the J writer refers to the deity as YHWH.We also have a difference in referring to the gender of the animals. In the English Bible the words are translated as male and female, but the Hebrew words are different.In Genesis 7:2 the words translated male and female carries the meaning of man and his wife. (J) In Genesis 7:9 the words refer to gender of humans or animals. (P) Each writer is consistent within their own style.Knowing that different sources make up the Torah doesn't detract from the message the writers or the redactor were trying to present to their audiences.It might be a threat to doctrine, but not to God. He already knows what they did.

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

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Some of us do have experience and know that what he is writing corresponds quite well with our experience.

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As I said, Paul didn't present his arguments in one line. He built to his point. What one gleans from one line may not be Paul's point. I'm interested in what Paul was telling his audience, not how one line speaks to you personally.

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When Paul writes "Now the Lord is the Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom." (2 Cor. 3:17) it takes more than a nimble intellect to grasp that truth.

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No it doesn't.

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It was no accident that God chose this man Paul to author 13 of the 27 New Testament books. And I would hope you would not be deceived by the "Paul Messed It All Up" crowd out there.

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Actually I'm more of the "Paul D'rashed Judaism and the Christians D'rashed Paul" group. Double D'rash can be such a mess.

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz