How much of a biblical literalist are you? Here’s how to find out.
I’m going to give you the names of some people in the Bible, and for each of them, assign a number according to the following scheme:
0 points: This person almost certainly did not exist.
1 point: This person probably existed, but elements of their life may have been fictionalised or allegorised in the Bible.
2 points: This person existed more or less as depicted in the Bible.
Here’s the list of people.
- Job
- Adam/Eve
- Moses
- Jesus
- Paul
Add them all up. I’d say 9+ would be pretty orthodox; you probably had doubts about Job, didn’t you? For shame.
Seven or eight, and you’re hanging in there, but I have to warn you that you’re venturing into apostasy territory. I mean, why accept Moses as a real person and not Adam and Eve? It’s all there in the book.
Anything under four, and you’re not very orthodox at all.
Admittedly, this test is best for sorting out levels of literalism at the top end.
30 December 2006 at 12:55 am
5.
I don’t think Job existed at all, and if Paul’s life was fictionalised he probably did it himself, so that doesn’t count and he therefore gets full points.
Does that put me on the road to apostasy? 😉
30 December 2006 at 6:06 am
You got a 5? Okay, now I’m trying to figure out how you might have answered, because even I got a 3.
I’d be willing to give Paul a 2, except for the road to Damascus bit, of course. Call it a 1 then. And yeah, Job is a curiosity. Who knows.
I actually tried to order them in some kind of continuum where most doubtful was first.
30 December 2006 at 7:00 am
0 for Job, 2 for Paul, 1 for each of the others.
If I was going to rank them in order starting from the least likely, then I’d have:
Job,
Adam and Eve,
Jesus,
Moses,
Paul
Not too far off what you have, except that I think Jesus is probably far more highly mythologised in the Bible than Moses, despite hailing from a later period.
30 December 2006 at 1:54 pm
4
🙂
30 December 2006 at 4:34 pm
Jeff also got a three. 1 point each for Moses, Jesus and Paul. Job and Adam and Eve are obvious archotypes.
30 December 2006 at 5:58 pm
You know who I forgot: Satan. I’m kickin’ myself.
Okay, I’m kind of surprised that people are saying Jesus might have been an eensy bit mythologised. An open question to the Christian (or post-Christian) blog readers: Does that bother you? How far can you allegorise the life of Jesus before it turns weak? I mean, you could probably let the water to wine go, but the resurrection?
Obviously it’s going to be different for me; Mormons trend literal, and my thinking was always, Well, if it’s not literally so, why bother? except for the moral stories. I suppose there are hazards to taking the strong view.
30 December 2006 at 6:45 pm
More importantly, what are you doing up at 3 in the morning?
wasn’t part of Jeseus’ message to the chosen people to stop taking the torah so literaly and see it for the moral lessons behind the stories? Why then are chistians so intent on being literal.
30 December 2006 at 11:43 pm
As I read it, Jesus was critical of the Pharisees for interpreting the law in such a legalistic way that it subverted the intention for which the law was given. Here’s one example.
I’m struggling to recall a scripture where he argues that it shouldn’t be taken literally — I don’t see that that was really a live issue at the time. It was more ‘letter of the law’ v ‘spirit’.
(BTW, It’s Programming Week, and I tend to stay up late then.)
1 January 2007 at 4:32 am
“Okay, I’m kind of surprised that people are saying Jesus might have been an eensy bit mythologised. An open question to the Christian (or post-Christian) blog readers: Does that bother you? How far can you allegorise the life of Jesus before it turns weak? I mean, you could probably let the water to wine go, but the resurrection?”
The mostly respected William Barclay was a heretic about miracles. Like the feeding of the five thousand was a miracle– of the spirit, where everyone was moved to generosity and shared the food that they had brought but been too stingy to bring out previously.
On the other hand I was spectator to a big shmilosophical carrying-on last night re: Jesus’ miracles, and the general consensus was “take it all or leave it all.”
I don’t know. I don’t find it particularly offensive to explain miracles in non-miraculous terms, so long as you believe the resurrection. On the other hand, if you believe in the one big miracle, why wouldn’t you believe the small stuff?
I guess the problem is also that if you take miracles away, you undermine the authority of the Bible, and then it gets messy, because a lot of stuff is so obviously not meant to be taken literally, and then it’s like, “Well, what IS meant to be taken literally and what is just illustrative?” Enter the theologians, historians, and linguists.
1 January 2007 at 9:07 am
I was happy to leave this as an ‘opinion’ thread, but now I’m really curious.
If you think that one scriptural figure existed and another didn’t, or if you think one miracle literally happened but another didn’t, what criteria are you using to decide that?
Dusting off my Mormon hat, in the case of Job, I would have said that 1) the story seemed sort of implausible, 2) it had the feel of a legend, and 3) Job never comes up as a literal person in LDS lore (e.g. Joseph Smith never claimed that Job appeared to him). But 1) and 2) are pretty fuzzy.
amy, it sounds like you wouldn’t want to let the resurrection go because it’s more intrinsic to Christian doctrine. Less-intrinsic miracles, you could take or leave. Is that about right, would you say?
1 January 2007 at 12:44 pm
“It sounds like you wouldn’t want to let the resurrection go because it’s more intrinsic to Christian doctrine. Less-intrinsic miracles, you could take or leave. Is that about right, would you say?”
Yes. No.
I don’t keep the resurrection because it’s central to the doctrine. I keep the doctrine because of the resurrection. Okay, moot point.
I think if you’re a Christian it just makes biblical, spiritual, and good sense to keep all of the miracles. If it was all bollocks, why would God let it get through?, you don’t have to worry about what is and isn’t true, or the author’s memory or honesty, and you get the full deal.
But if for you’re a Christian and for some reason, you just can’t believe some of the miracles, well, you lose a lot of great stuff, but it’s not like you get into heaven for believing that Jesus walked on water. It’s the implications of the miracles and how you react to the implications that matter. If you think the authors got it wrong, then you’re just a bit foolish; if you think that Jesus couldn’t do it, then I guess you’re in trouble.
1 January 2007 at 3:51 pm
To take it back to the original post, your argument for ‘miracle literalism’ would do equally well as an argument for biblical literalism, and the existence of everyone from Eve to Job.
Would you say then that you’re a biblical literalist?
Here be dragons.
2 January 2007 at 12:15 am
Am I a biblical literalist?
No. I do come from an evangelical background, but I think what that means is that we believe the bible is not open to any old interpretation– each author had an actual intent in writing, whatever that intent may be, and that’s how we read it.
Which is not to say that all the authors’ intents were to write an exact literal history. I wouldn’t read the creation literally, for example, because of its text and context.
How can we really know the author’s intent? And aren’t we imposing our own worldview on theirs? (e.g. the author of genesis can’t have really thought the world was created in six days because of what we know about evolution.)
Well, sure. You just try and stay as honest as you can with the information you do have. The main thing, though, is to understand that there are different intents, and that a literal reading isn’t feasible.
*picks up sword*
2 January 2007 at 1:34 am
Easy there, easy!
I actually agree that a literal reading isn’t feasible — I just draw different conclusions from that, obviously.
I did read your link. Guessing about author intent would be an inexact effort, wouldn’t it. I mean, It makes sense that knowing more about the author’s worldview and language would help in interpretation, but we’re so far removed now. It would be something like mind-reading.
I do appreciate your putting up with my barrage of questions.
Any biblical literalists want to respond? Or did they all leave in disgust several weeks ago with the ‘Christianity makes ya gay’ post?
2 January 2007 at 2:23 am
(I meant that about the, you know, the dragons.)
Questions appreciated! Made me realise my own inconsistencies re: the OT, for one thing.
2 January 2007 at 4:54 am
It’s a minefield.
(nodding sensibly)
Looking over the profile photos, I think it’s great that a 39-year-old and a six-year-old can have this kind of discussion.
10 January 2007 at 7:23 pm
Talk about being legalistic. C’mon, you say, “It was more ‘letter of the law’ v ‘spirit’.”. Literal vs metaphorical or even legalistic vs intentions. They are really all saying the same thing. Is it more important to the doctrine that a man named Moses really existed or the spiritual lessons learned from his story. I think Jesus was saying that the spiritual lessons are far more important than the facts of the story.
However, Christ himself is another story. I think for a christian two things must be fact. That he lived, and that he was resurected. No getting around those. But to think that anyone, much less the central figure of a major religion, whos life story has been told for 2000 years hasn’t been mythologized at least some has got to be blind.