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Results from: Answered Bible Questions, Answers, Unanswered Bible Questions, Notes Ordered by Verse | ||||||
Results | Verse | Author | ID# | |||
1 | How can we tell figurative from literal? | Bible general Archive 1 | Morant61 | 19626 | ||
Attempted Answer................................. Greetings Sir! Unfortunately, I don't believe there is a totally objective criteria for determing whether or not a particular passage is historical or figurative. Even if God included labels identify each verse as one or the other, there would still be debates over the issue. :-) However, I do think that there is a process which will yield the proper answer 99.99 percent of the time. 1) First, determine the genre of the book. The very nature of the book will tell us much about what we will expect to find within it. a) Gospels - are historical narratives written for a purpose. Thus, we would expect most of the content to be historical, unless otherwise noted. b) Apocalyptic - deals with future events in pictorial and graphic language. Thus, most of the content will be figurative. c) Letters - deal with real life situations. So most of their contents will be literal. 2) Secondly, determine the genre of the passage. It is possible to have apocalyptic passages within an historical narrative. Parables are found in historical narratives. However, they are usually identifed as such. 3) Thirdly, determine the types of speech in the passage. Do we have poetry? Do we have quotations? Do we have hyberbole? Do we have metaphors? Interpret each appropriately. The vast majority of the time it is not difficult to tell. Your Brother in Christ, Tim Moran |
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2 | Genesis Creation, a practical example? | Bible general Archive 1 | Sir Pent | 19627 | ||
I agree that we probably could not come up with a method that would work 100 percent of the time. However, I think that a process that could tell 95 percent of the time would be good enough for me. I like your ideas of combining things, however, let's take a look at a specific example and see how it would apply. Genesis as a book would I guess fall under your category of Gospel (historical narrative), and therefore we would assume that it was literal unless noted otherwise. Then if we look at the Creation story, we discover that it is written in the form of ancient poetry, and doesn't make a lot of sense literally. It would seem that this method would tell us that it was meant to be figurative, yet you and I both believe it is literal. How do we reconcile this? |
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3 | Genesis Creation, a practical example? | Bible general Archive 1 | Searcher56 | 19650 | ||
Let me get in, please. Why can't poetry be literal? To me it makes sense to take it literally. There is no reason to try to blend in anything else. Searcher |
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4 | Genesis Creation, a practical example? | Bible general Archive 1 | Sir Pent | 19830 | ||
Contrary View, Logic ........................... Dear Steve, Of course you can join the discussion, you're always welcome. I admit that poetry does have the possibility of being literal (ie. Roses are red, violets are blue). However, it is quite often figurative (ie. My love is like a red, red, rose). Since the literal interpretation of the Genesis Creation doesn't make sense (to many people), and it is in the form of poetry, many people assume that it is the figurative kind of poetry. |
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