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- #101
You guys can get mad at me but I really don't think anyone should take the Bible or the Quran literally and look to it everyday for instruction.
Not being Muslim I won't presume to speak for the Qu-ran as to its literal intent; however Sunniman has explicitly said that Muslims read it literally with the presumption that it has the same meaning for all.
I know of no Jewish or Christian scholars who would make that claim for all the manuscripts Christians now refer to as the Old and New Testaments--and for some the Apocrypha--that make up the Bible used by Christians.
Within those manuscripts are metaphor, allegory, parable, artistic imagery, poetry, creative explanations for this or that, history, teachings/instruction, law and prophecy. Each can be taken literally for what it was then or as the perception of those who wrote down the words. It is a look into the hearts, minds, thinking, culture, and experience of ancient peoples and there are few passages of the Bible that do not contain myriad concepts and imagery.
The ancient Jews who selected the Old Testament manuscripts to include; and the ancient Christians who selected the New Testament manuscripts to include did a brilliant job. The process of editing it all together was possibly not as brilliant and sometimes contributes to confusion, but careful scholarship sorts most of that out.
I think the main thing to know about the Bible is that it was written through the prism of experience, language, and culture of the people who wrote down the words. They weren't thinking about how different the experience, language, and culture of the people would be in the 21st century. So to understand the Bible, you have to read it through the eyes of those who wrote it. Try to interpret it only with 20th and 21st century experience and language, and I think most people will probably get a lot of it wrong.
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