Quote from: Jamie D on September 27, 2012, 04:22:05 PM
As the Old Testament is of Hebrew origin, many Jewish scholars recognize that some of the accounts are allegorical, and, as you say, designed to convey a message.
Right
Even conservative Jews do not see much of the Old Testament as a literal translation. Many of our "literal ideas" come much much later. For example, many Jewish rabbis will tell you The Book of Jonah was a satyr on Prophets of the day. It wasn't meant to be taken literally.
The problem is when you take things literally (especially in the OT) then you are severely limiting yourself. If you take the Old Testament literally, then homosexuality is punishable by death. The mentally and physically handicapped are not allowed in Church. A woman who is raped must marry her rapist or the rapist must pay a dowry to the father.
I could go on and on and on about how dangerous taking the Bible Literally is. I used to believe the Bible literally too. But things just didn't add up. For example, Jonah's fish? Some say it's a whale. Then others say it's a big fish. Also, the flood story. There is no way Noah had fit two of every animal into the Ark. There was no world wide flood...no evidences of it. Now, there was a localized flood..that I believe because many early middle eastern civilizations writes about. If you were to take Noah's account literally, then you must believe it was a world wide event.
Also, the creation story. No way one man and one woman could have procreated a race without severe genetic retardation by the very first generation. The Tower of Babel is more of a fable just as the Prodigal Son is: the story has a moral to it....not the literalness behind it. Etc etc
Personally, I find it much more spiritually fulfilling to see truths in the scripture without having to take everything literally because when you take everything literally then you (in my opinion) are severely limiting what God can do.
For example, The city of Jericho never had huge walls...it never had walls at all until after 1000 years after Joshua's time. No walls = there was no march around the city so that the Jews could commit genocide. We learned and talked about the archeological evidence showing there was no wall and a student had a rather hard time with this. Which is fine. But to me, I was relieved that the story in the Bible where God gave the Jews a high five for killing every man, woman, and child (plus livestock) wasn't true. However, what was more shocking is this: why did someone feel the need to add that genocidal story in the scriptures? Now, that's disturbing
