In a comment, discussing a verse in Matthew, Ed Farrell writes, “It’s revelation and therefore must be understood literally.” I am not sure that Ed wants to say that everything stated in the Bible is to be taken literally, but I hope not, for it seems clear to me that much of what we read in the Bible must be taken figuratively. Nothing I am about to say is original with me.
We read in Genesis that light was created before sources of light (sun, moon, stars) were created. The creation of light is reported at Genesis 1:3, but the creation of sources of light occurs later as reported at Genesis 1: 14-17. Obviously, light cannot exist before sources of light exist. So what the Bible reports on this head is false, if taken literally. Furthermore, if the sun does not come into existence until the fourth day, how can there be days before the fourth day? In one sense of ‘day,’ it is the period of time from the rising of the sun to its setting. In a second sense of ‘day,’ one that embraces the first, a day is the period of time from the rising of the sun to its next rising. In either of these senses there cannot be a day without a sun. So again, these passages cannot be taken literally.
But there is a deeper problem. The Genesis account implies that the creation of the heavens and the earth took time, six days to be exact. But the creation of the entire system of space-time-matter cannot be something that occurs in time. And so again Genesis cannot be taken literally, but figuratively as expressing the truth that, as St. Augustine puts it, “the world was made, not in time, but simultaneously with time.” (City of God, XI, 6)
And then there is the business about God resting on the seventh day. What? He got tired after all the heavy lifting and had to take a rest? As Augustine remarks, that would be a childish way of reading Genesis 2:3. The passage must be taken figuratively: “. . . the sacred narrative states that God rested, meaning thereby that those rest who are in Him, and whom He makes to rest.” (City of God, XI, 8) Whether you agree with Augustine’s figurative reading, you ought to agree that the passage cannot be taken literally.
What is to be taken literally and what figuratively? “. . . a method of determining whether a locution is literal or figurative must be established. And generally this method consists in this: that whatever appears in the divine Word that literally does not pertain to virtuous behavior or to the truth of faith you must take to be figurative.” (Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, Book Three, Chapter 10)
This method consigns a lot to the figurative. So it is not literally true that God caused the Red Sea to part, letting the Israelites through, and then caused the waters to come together to drown the Pharaoh’s men?
I’m just asking.
This is a very good but very huge topic and full of difficulties. I think any real discussion has to start with an assumption of what the bible is, and this will be something quite different for the community of believers in Jesus Christ and people that don’t believe. And even among the community of believers, there will be differences of approach to the bible, and for Roman Catholics vs Protestants vs Eastern Orthodox these can be major differences even when certain core doctrines are shared. But for any believer, I think, the bible exists to reveal the ways of God so that a believer can live according to God’s commandments, after having first believed in Christ and accepted His atoning sacrifice which removes the barrier of original sin. This is a Protestant formulation, which is characterized by close reading of scripture to the exclusion of accumulated church traditions. But “close reading of scripture” still requires a hermeneutic, which is a rational, extra-biblical construct. And as to what can be taken literally, that’s mostly taken from the grammar and general “sense” of the passage, but in the case of your Genesis examples there’s also the issue of a general cosmology foreign to moderns. My personal feeling is that trying to reconcile ancient cosmology with modern cosmology and phylogenic trees is of more interest to non-believers interesting in debunking the bible than it is to believers trying to live as God would have them live, in spite of such episodes as the Scopes monkey trials. But there are still issues of interpretation that are very complicated and difficult.
Anyway, enough for now. Here’s a very good essay on Revelation and Interpretation by the Eastern Orthodox theologian Georges Florovsky:
https://preachersinstitute.com/2011/05/26/revelation-and-interpretation/
Genesis is a gold mine of interpretation. There’s the literal meaning to contend with but it’s also regarded as a trove of esoteric meaning that’s central to Kabbalistic tradition (detailed in the Jewish Zohar) and to Swedenborg’s claimed revelations in his Arcana Caelestia.
Augustine treated the literal meaning of Genesis exhaustively in “The Literal Meaning of Genesis,” which I’ve never gotten through entirely since it is exhausting as well as exhaustive and looks at Genesis in light of the science of his day in addition to common sense. But in writing this treatise Augustine also had church apologetics mind so you find passages like this:
“Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of the world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and the moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of the holy scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts that they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their opinion, ‘although they understand neither what they say not the things about which they make assertion’ (1 Timothy 1:7).”
Bill,
As to your specific questions, I don’t believe everything in the bible can be interpreted literally. But how do you decide? I can give you my approach for what it’s worth. I always start by reading the text literally to first try to understand what is being given account of, what elements are present in the account, and, as much as possible, what motive or end might be driving the account. As much as I can, I try to obtain these answers from the narrative and not from outside the narrative, especially “outside” in the form of my own preconceptions, or at first, even commentaries that attempt to explain or explicate a text. “Narratives” are accounts of events, but there are other sorts of texts in the bible that are instructional, commanding, or poetic and not presented as narratives. Any of these texts may contain metaphors as figures of speech. I think such metaphorical speech is rare in Old Testament prophetical writings presented as histories and in New Testament gospel narratives, but more common in the Old Testament “writings” (such as the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, etc.), Christ’s words, and in some of the epistles. And of course Christ uses parables.
So, assuming you can arrive at the literal meaning, perhaps only be provisionally suspending your judgment, what then? As you pointed out, Augustine maintained that all scripture has a literal and a figurative sense, “figurative” meaning its hidden, spiritual sense, which has priority. In “The Literal Meaning of Genesis” Augustine tries to gives priority to the literal meaning and encounters endless difficulties in trying to reframe the words in language that conforms to the understanding of the physical world of his day, let alone ours. From which he concludes that the creation sequence in Genesis can only really be understood in its spiritual sense, which he attempts to explicate based on the conceptual framework of orthodox Christian understanding about the nature of God. But other conceptual frameworks can also be applied: witness the esoteric Kabbalistic speculations in the Zohar’s commentaries on Genesis, or Swedenborg’s speculations given in his commentaries on Genesis.
This still leaves the question of the literal meaning, which remains the basis from which any figurative meaning is derived. The tacit assumption of nearly everyone, believers or not, seems to be that the literal narrative can’t stand on its own. Is that a valid assumption, and if not what are people missing?
Enough for now, maybe more later.