Re: Reading Genesis literally

From "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman (or was it Cutler's
work about N. Steno -- I may be conflating two recent readings of mine),
   I recently learned that what we refer to as "literalism" or
"literalists" today is probably an unfair caricature of what the word
used to refer to. Back in the reformation days, those known as
literalists freely acknowledged literary devices in their many
appearances throughout scripture -- beyond just those parts that are
obviously or explicitly acknowledged to be parables or poems, etc.
Even today's literalists are probably not quite so literarily shallow as
they are often painted. But it does sound if the term did have deeper
nuanced meanings historically than gets packed into it today.

I was interested to learn in Cutler's work "Seashell on a Mountaintop"
that Christian geologists (in the then fledgling profession) and
certainly many Christian scientists in general had little objections to
the departure from the young-earth time line in and around the 18th
century -- in some ways precipitated by the pious Steno himself. It
wasn't till Darwin's common descent which did evoke stronger reactions
-- and perhaps well after that even that old earth timeliness came to be
seen as ammunition in the science vs. religion warfare model.
Apparently some who would have identified with "listeralism" back then
saw no conflict in reading Genesis 1 timelines metaphorically. I can't
get more specific without checking out the book again to find names, but
others here probably know who's who.

--merv

There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale
returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact. --
Mark Twain

gordon brown wrote:

>On Sat, 22 Apr 2006, burgytwo@juno.com wrote:
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>>From AIG this week:
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>>Q: AiG teaches that we must take Genesis as written, but should we take the whole Bible literally?
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>>A: We?ve got to be very careful here. It?s true, for example, that Jesus quoted from Genesis when he talked about the foundation of marriage. Thus, he took Genesis literally. Paul quoted from Genesis when writing about the first man and the Last Adam, so he accepted Genesis literally, too.
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>We tend to give the term 'literally' a meaning that is not literal. Even
>the so-called literalists do not take everything in the Bible literally.
>The passage referred to above that Jesus quotes is Gen. 2:24 that speaks
>of two becoming one flesh. Does AiG take one flesh literally?
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>Gordon Brown
>Department of Mathematics
>University of Colorado
>Boulder, CO 80309-0395
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Received on Sun, 23 Apr 2006 21:25:38 -0500