I am currently reading the old testament straight through. My first thought when reading it is that biblical literalists cannot possibly have actually read the old testament. The book, as any one who has read it can see, is self contradictory. Several stories are repeated multiple times, with subtle variations. A lot of it seems to be not relevant or even obsolete (the promised borders of Israel, for example).

The thing is that the bible, like most western literature before the enlightenment, is not written to tell a specific, true story. Its meant to be about Truth, the deeper meaning the writers saw in the world. This is really difficult for modern readers, because we are used to reading books that are about things that happened. We don’t really have myths and legends in the same way anymore. Augustine himself struggled with accepting christianity because he found the scripture to be absurd until he found what he was a deeper meaning in the book.

For some reason the idea that all truth can be found in the bible ( a thoroughly modern notion ) seems to appeal to the fundamentalists. That its as simple as looking in the bible and all will be answered. For most evangelical christians “bible study” consists of very slowly and methodically reading the bible and then accepting what it says in isolation, assuming that a three line verse means anything on its own.

I always wondered how the leaders of this movement, who often have advanced degrees and clearly aren’t complete idiots, can accept this view of a “literal bible”. It turns out they don’t believe this at all. In fact, their version of biblical literalism leaves as much room for interpretation as catholic exegesis:

Scripture is inerrant, not in the sense of being absolutely precise by modern standards, but in the sense of making good its claims and achieving that measure of focused truth at which its authors aimed.

So what they mean is that bible means what they say it means. More from the “Chicago Statement” after the jump:

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