Christians- Do you think the Bible is to be taken literally?
607687
No, Yes and Yes.\n\nThe Bible itself tell us it is a mystery, and we know for a fact that not all of it is literal, but much of it is stories used to teach us lessons. \n\nI believe, and you wont find many like me, in a God seperate from the Bible. I believe there are things we don't know, and may never know. I believe the Bible gives us only a small acconut of history, and there is much that is left out. To me, God exists seprate from the Bible. I would still believe as I do, if there was none.
630582
Dear Lupis_Noctum,\n\nI view myself as a Christian Moderate, and I recognize parts of the Bible as being literal and parts as being idiomatic and parts as being allegorical.\n\nI use exactly the same methodology that I use in reading any book. As you know, even in day to day speech, we use language and sentences that are sometimes literal, sometimes idiomatic and sometimes allegorical.\n\nSo I am not being inconsistent with day to day use of language when I understand the Bible similarly. (I use the historic-geographic-cultural method of understanding the Bible).\n\nCordially,\nJohn\nhttp://www.GodSci.org
924857
nope\n"put a Bible out into the wind and rain it decenigrats, but to us the wind and rain are our Bible."\n-?
375977
Don't you have that backwards? I've met many people who believe every word in the bible even if you can prove that it is a miss translation, or against known facts. The bible can be used to "prove" anything you like if you take it out of context and add your own spin.
742993
I think that this is the biggest problem with Christianity.  If you take the whole bible literally, than you aren’t making any logical sense, but it you take parts of it metaphorically than you have to pick and chose which parts to take seriously.\n\nIt’s all pretty self-serving if you ask me.
30953
I agree with you and have said the same thing myself many times.  From my point of view the bible is much like Grimms fairy tales.  To be used as and example of right and wrong.
865845
Dear ES,\n\nI agree with you and I enjoy reading it and giving away copies of the Bible.\n\nLong before I read the Bible from cover-to-cover I intended to re-write the Bible and take out all of the sexist language.  What a joke that was!  When I finally read it I didn't change it but it sure did change me!\n\nOne wonderful thing I noticed was that I had the feeling that it was written directly to me, even though I know it was written long before I was born.  It reminds me of looking at a photograph when it seems as though the subject is looking right back at you.\n\nEven though there have been several translations of the Bible they all say just about the same thing.  However I've seen a few that are not divinely inspired and there is no sense of the Living Word of God.\n\nYes, it is fascinating to look at the prophecies and realize that Jesus was the only person who ever had his biography written before He was born!
918941
In Protestant (liberal) theology there are several "middle grounds."  There is the notion that the Bible "contains God's word" and also that is can "become God's words."  These are of course nuanced meanings of how Scripture communicates God's message through a supposedly imperfect text.
1084937
Nope...\ntake a look at the source for the accurate verse.
218828
Not in the least.\n\nThe bible is a book of fiction just like any other novel, so it would not make the tiniest difference to me.
51838
You know, YOU take the Bible more literally than we ""Bible-thumpers"" do! You here, not us, seem to be claiming that every single verse in the Bible MUST be taken literally, and we believe that, yes, there really are verses that are meant only to be taken as allegory. Did Gd actually ""walk"" in the Garden of Eden? YOU seem to say that this, too, must be taken literally, and not us!\n\nSo, it is possible, FOR US, to ""Believe in"" the Bible without taking Every Single verse literally, although you seem to say this verse must be taken literally for us to believe in it....
677257
No,  the Bible is already facing a lot of criticism, even the majority of it's followers do not believe the book is literal.  In another 2000 years our knowledge of the Universe will be enormous, such people that believe in the Bible will be considered insane, and probably treated.\n\nIf Science and Society were to push Biotechnology, along with Nanotechnology there is a possibility that some of us could live to see the year 4000.  After all the body is just a machine programmed to live a certain age.
1048173
Bible is not the tool to find truth. It assumes a God and records God's words as given by the prophets.\n\nHaving said that, the bible interprets itself. There are plenty of resources to pin down the meaning.\n\nIs Bible meaning truth? What do you believe?
149960
Obviously. A bible is like a bubonic plauge virus. As an object, it is nothing. But under the right conditions, it has the power to destoy millions, even billions of lives.
434024
Contrary to what a lot of Englightened people on here will have you think, the Bible isn't just for scholars or spinners. If it is true, the Bible is God's Word to man, then I think it is safe to take the book at face value assuming that most people were quite illiterate at the time of its first use. \n\nGod would not make his only word to man undicipherable to all, save the rich intellects of the world. This seems like the biggest, most obvious trap, out there! The rich have the key to salvation, but of course they do! The rich Europeans, to take it even further and make it better! Give me a flippin break. This is getting stupid.\n\nThis is one of the major "flaws" in the entire idea of the Bible being God's Word. Does God not know that most people on Earth are hardly literate, can't understand Hebrew or Aramic, and by inspiring a 3,000 plus page text, he has put the salvation of nearly everyone on earth in the hands of a very few who can actually READ who came from Europe and were bent on ruling the world at all cost??! Impossible for God to do such a thing to 90% of the rest of his own creation!\n\nSo, read the Bible just as it comes to you. Yes, God asked God why he forsakened himself. That is the surface interpretation, no spin. Unless your parents could afford to send you to private school, where they teach you how to spin, I mean interpret the Bible, or unless you were born into Christianity where there are churches all around you that teach these spin techniques, you would never know that when you read page 2,198 in the Bible, that it is ACTUALLY refering to page 1,328 which REALLY means what page 498 said in the third paragraph referring to page 20.\n\nThe logical or face understanding of the text, is that God called out to himself(strange indeed), in a manner that seemed  much like begging of himself to help himself. It's ridiculous.
809124
Well done for starting to think like a human.\n\nIt is pretty obvious that the bible is not true. It is a packaged product designed to create a religious truth with which to bind (and blind) people. \n\nBind in that you believe in 'God' and you have to take the bible wholesale (imperfections, contradications and everything). Blind int hat you have to ignore the real evidence of history in order to 'believe' and be saved.\n\nArcheologists do not tend to use the bible as source material because so much of it is false. There is no historical reference to Jesus outside of a few books in the bible. \n\nIn the ancient world myths were not seen as untrue in quite the way we see them today. Myths were a way of spreading a spritual idea or 'truth' through the telling of an allegorical tale that could work on many levels. \n\nThe Egyptians, for example, were prodigious record keepers. We have found written accounts for the tiniest minutea of their daily lives, and records for nobles and royal families stretching back many thousands of years. We even know the names of those kings that that they tried to have 'erased' from history. \nYet nowhere in any of these records is a high nobleman called 'Moses' recorded. And there is no mention anywhere of the Jews being held captive in Egypt, or of thousands of Jewish 'slaves' suddenly up and leaving via the red sea. \n\nRead the bible, by all means. But do not take it literally!
619620
Looks like you answered it yourself. However, my personal opinion is that I really don't care what it says, because I don't believe in it anyway.\n\nThe bible is all I need.