Question for non-literalist folks: When does literal biblical history begin?

Most of narrative in the Old Testament is a saga involving God and Man. Specifying who is an historical person is difficult. Specifying who is not legendary is even more so. The advantage of writing with legend in mind is that an author can write about a particular characteristic of a person and emphasize that. Abraham, of course, is cited for his faith. Most of his stories involve feats of great faith, and instances of failing faith. Through all of them, God's faithfulness is consistent.

By the time the narrative reaches Abraham, I think we're probably talking about historical people, even if the accounts might be legendary. I've come to this particular conclusion mainly because of historical details within the text that are strangely precise, but not contemporary to the author. Also, Arabs typically trace their lineage back to Abraham. My concern with this latter example is how much this tracing is influenced by the Bible.

At any rate, as a narrative goes, it would be difficult to "make up" various kings who never existed, historically. Again, legendary is another matter. Also, accounts of contemporaries are much less likely to have taken on a legendary status than accounts of predecessors and ancestors. A narrative about Nehemiah (arguably, from Nehemiah's own hand) is more subject to non-historical content through point of view, than non-historical content through legend-making.

ChetSinger said:

This is something I've become curious about.

For you brothers and sisters who don't believe that the beginning of Genesis is literal history: when do you think that biblical history actually becomes literal?

Is it Noah, or Abraham, or Moses, or David, or Daniel, or <insert name here>? And can you describe how you've come to this belief?

I'm not looking to slam anybody's beliefs, but to learn more myself.

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The big problem with the question is that what we understand as history is a complex structure that only arises with Renaissance. We are very much the result of a particular way of looking at history. History studies before the 16thC had enormous amounts of allegory and what we now refer to as mythical elements. It was the meaning of the events in the overall big picture that people considered good historical writing. Simply writing down the facts, dates, places and people was considered scribal and uninteresting. In an era of story telling, of oral histories (even in the middle ages very few people could read), you can understand how memory shaped stories. To make something memorable is a goal of much writing at these earlier times. Hence the poetical and cadence elements coupled with repetition often with subtle changes.

Even in our own culture what does "literal history" really mean?
see the movie _Crash_? it is all about meaning, it proports to be a day-in-the-life but do you really think it happened or is it just written as if it happened? Likewise the Phantom of the Opera is extremely historical consciousness aware and is written to appeal to the modern notions of history. Open up Newsweek or Time newsmagazines, do you ever get the idea that even when they are talking about the exact same events that they are talking about different things? Why? because commentary and analysis is built into the articles and they come from different angles.

If by literal history do you mean simple factual truth like:
did Abram exist? did he leave Ur?
did Adam exist? did he live in Eden?
that misses the great themes that we associate with literature. I'd much rather read a good historical novel about the Battle of Antitem then a straightforward military analysis of the events. Why? interest. newspaper and police reports are uninteresting, they by design eliminate the human element.

there's more, but gluadys is our resident literature person and i'm sure she will have lots of important things to add.....

Many of the attributes given to legendary figures in the bible are also ascribed to kings and heroes in other cultures of the time and area, like the Babylonian king lists. These figures are regarded as mythical, but based on historical predecessors. Over time, people looking back see these figures as so big and culturally important that characteristics like incredibly long life (Abraham, Adam), extraordinary military skill (the Judges, David) or sexual prowess and wealth (Solomon) are embellished or added. The hard line that we now perceive between "True" and "False", as has been noted, is not the same in the premodern period as it is now. Rather than saying "Literal History(tm) begins here and the rest is myth", one has to realize that there are mythical elements to all of the Bible, from the first word to the last, because that is the sort of narrative that was prevalent in the cultures that created it.

ChetSinger said:

This is something I've become curious about.

For you brothers and sisters who don't believe that the beginning of Genesis is literal history: when do you think that biblical history actually becomes literal?

Is it Noah, or Abraham, or Moses, or David, or Daniel, or <insert name here>? And can you describe how you've come to this belief?

I'm not looking to slam anybody's beliefs, but to learn more myself.

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It does not become history at any moment in its many books.

What we think of as history or historical is an idea that was not used by any of the cultures that have added to what we call the Bible. Our concept of history is less than a thousand years old and would have been an alien way of thinking to any of the authors of the Bible.

. . . I'll simply say kudos to everyone who has posted in the thread thus far. Well said, all.

ChetSinger said:

For you brothers and sisters who don't believe that the beginning of Genesis is literal history: when do you think that biblical history actually becomes literal?

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Personally, I believe that history becomes "literal" from Genesis 4 onwards, in the sense that the stories from Genesis 4 onwards are based on true events. This doesn't necessarily mean of course that Genesis records exactly what everyone said word-for-word.

- Genesis 1 is completely non-historical; it is a theological message
- Genesis 2-3 are "mythical". Adam is a "generic" Adam, a representative for created and sinful humanity. (This is not to say that there wasn't a literal fall at some point in human history -- I believe there was.)
- Genesis 4 (Cain's murder of Abel) is probably based on a true historical event, though the details are lost in the mists of time.
- The Adam of Genesis 5 was "historical" Adam -- i.e. a literal person (upon whom the Gen 2-3 myth was based) though not necessarily the progenitor of the entire human race.
- Genesis 6-9 is likewise based on a true historical event (a very large flood, with very few survivors) but again the exact details are lost in the mists of time. The story is told in such a way as to bring out its theological significance rather than strict historical facts.
- Genesis 10 (Babel) ditto.
- Genesis 12 onwards are a retelling of actual events, but again, it would be wrong to assume we are dealing with word-for-word transcripts of conversations.

Your thoughts, ChetSinger and others?

What does the word "literal" actually mean? If you mean "factual", then there are "facts" in the Bible. The list of kings in the OT is probably factual, though some of the stories may be legendary, the prophets probably existed, etc...

The New Testament Gospels certainly contain "facts" - but they're told in story form, not as a modern historical account, and again, it's probably mixed up with legends and "chinese whispers." They were included because they meant something to the writers, not because anyone at the time either could have or would have known if they actually happened.

And there were probably lots of stories that weren't included. There's a story in the Gospel of Thomas (I think) of Jesus giving life to some clay birds he made. Why didn't any of the four Gospel writers include it? It's no more implausible (given the understanding of the time) than walking on water. They didn't include (if they heard it) because it disagreed with their theology, not because they couldn't authenticate it.

Or it could mean "plain": and here I have some sympathy. Although I accept that the church has often taken passages symbolically, using analogical systems etc, I find all that terribly mechanical. The "plain" reading is much to be prefered to elaborate allegories that often prop up a particular theological understanding imposed onto scripture by the status quo.

But what is the plain reading? It can't be what we simply read off the surface, as if 2000 years of history and philosophical and lingusitic change haven't occured. We have to find out what it might have meant to the original readers before we find out it means for us.

And that's an uncertain and neverending process, because we can never go back that far without loss. There's no such thing as a perfect translation even of a text that was written last year, never mind a text written between 3000 and 2000 years ago.

I sometimes wonder if the real problem for literalists is not science but the uncertainty of interpretation. A nice solid YEC interpretation seems wonderfully complete and comfortable. But it's a house built on sand.

rmwilliamsll said:

there's more, but gluadys is our resident literature person and i'm sure she will have lots of important things to add.....

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Actually, you and everyone else have all said it very well.

There is factual history in the bible, as we know from archeology and other extra-biblical sources. But for the most part it is incidental to the story as written.

It is best to think of almost all the bible as story, which here and there refers to actual history rather than a history in which here and there you find some story-telling.

It is not a simple matter of drawing a line and saying "on this side is story and on that side is history." Story and history interpenetrate each other through all of scripture.

I think there are some historical figures in the Old Testament, but I don't think the point of the stories is to be historically accurate. It shows a relationship between God and his people. The accounts in Judges, for example, may or may not have happened as they are laid out, but I don't think that that affects the reader getting the point of the story.

i just came across an interesting paragraph on the topic of exegesis and the plain literal meaning of the text in:

_A Better Way:Rediscovering the Drama of God-centered Worship_ by Michael Horton

it's on page 84 and 85

many people will say that they simply read or preach "whatever is there in the text." A pastor told me once, "I just preach the Word. If i'm in Galatians, I sound like an antinomian, but if I'm in the Sermon on the Mount, I sound like a legalist." The unspoken assumption here is that some of us at least come to Scripture without looking for anything in particular. Every passage is a collection of puzzle pieces, often without any recourse to the box top(his metaphor is a jigsaw puzzle with the guiding picture on the box top, -rw) If this pastor had the checks and balances of a good systematic theology and an eye for the unifying plot, he would not have confused his hearers, who could hear antinomianism and legalism from the same minister. This same unwitting assumption of the Bible's disunity is behind the discourse one sometimes hears among Christians debating a particular point of theology. "Well, you have your verse and I have mine," one says. But if God is the ultimate author of Scripture, do we really want to say that the Bbiel is inconsistent or even contradictory?

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This is a good example, the pastor preaching contradictory sermons, of why the plain, literal, man in the pew hermeneutic is full of troubles and problems.

This same unwitting assumption of the Bible's disunity is behind the discourse one sometimes hears among Christians debating a particular point of theology.

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I know this will get me into trouble with some...

but the idea that the Bible is a "unity" is something that ought to be questioned. The problem with "systematic theology" has always been that it assumes that all the writers of the Bible are singing from the same hymn-sheet. But how can a fifth century BC Hebrew writer be thinking the same as a first century AD ex-Pharisee?

We like "unities" here in the West: nice, simple, easily followable lines of development so that we can fit everything together and get the whole picture straight. But what if it's not like a jigsaw with a single picture after all? What if it is, and is meant to be, a whole series of pictures, all somewhat but not completely related, all telling us something but not the whole thing?

Maybe more like a mesh of ideas, a stew of ingredients. To which we add our own lives, knowledge and experiences, the history of the church, etc...

We like to think of the Bible as complete, inviolable. But no text is complete until it has a reader.

but I've seen enough evidence to convince me.

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could you post some of this evidence?


to me, the bible should never conflict with what we know to be true. god didn't give us these brains to ignore them.

To me, the bible reads like an account of events that happened.

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So does a good novel.

The authors of the New Testament, and Jesus himself, seem to refer to Old Testament figures as actual people.

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So if I compare someone to Hercules that means that Hercules must have existed?

But, in a way, you're right, they did probably think they were real people. However, they didn't have the benefit of historical and scientific method, nor the resources to actually find out whether these people really did exist. They just took it on the authority of what they had been told. They couldn't do anything else; we can.

As for the so-called evidence, I suspect that you'd be a first if you actually had any "evidence" that we had't already heard, rebutted thousands of times, and got thoroughly sick of.

gluadys said:

Actually, you and everyone else have all said it very well.

There is factual history in the bible, as we know from archeology and other extra-biblical sources. But for the most part it is incidental to the story as written.

It is best to think of almost all the bible as story, which here and there refers to actual history rather than a history in which here and there you find some story-telling.

It is not a simple matter of drawing a line and saying "on this side is story and on that side is history." Story and history interpenetrate each other through all of scripture.

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A story like King Arther? Just curious, but a story like a historical novel, basically a work of fiction based on similar historical events? Also, is the NT and the OT viewed in the same light, as a story?

artybloke said:

So does a good novel.



So if I compare someone to Hercules that means that Hercules must have existed?

But, in a way, you're right, they did probably think they were real people. However, they didn't have the benefit of historical and scientific method, nor the resources to actually find out whether these people really did exist. They just took it on the authority of what they had been told. They couldn't do anything else; we can.

As for the so-called evidence, I suspect that you'd be a first if you actually had any "evidence" that we had't already heard, rebutted thousands of times, and got thoroughly sick of.

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Are you saying that JESUS probably thought Adam was a real person? Wouldn't JESUS know? Wasn't Jesus there?

charityagape said:

A story like King Arther? Just curious, but a story like a historical novel, basically a work of fiction based on similar historical events? Also, is the NT and the OT viewed in the same light, as a story?

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The Bible is a compilation of "the Scriptures." Thus, one has to treat each document (and even each passage within a document) in its own style. One cannot read Psalms and infer that the whole Bible is poetry (though, much of it is written in poetic forms). One cannot read Revelation and conclude that the whole Bible is an apocalypse.

But we cannot suppose that the Bible was written for our time and society, only.

Willtor said:

The Bible is a compilation of "the Scriptures." Thus, one has to treat each document (and even each passage within a document) in its own style. One cannot read Psalms and infer that the whole Bible is poetry (though, much of it is written in poetic forms). One cannot read Revelation and conclude that the whole Bible is an apocalypse.

But we cannot suppose that the Bible was written for our time and society, only.

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That doesn't really have anything to do with:


A story like King Arther? Just curious, but a story like a historical novel, basically a work of fiction based on similar historical events? Also, is the NT and the OT viewed in the same light, as a story?

Also, I don't suppose that the Bible was written for our time and society only, I believe it was written for all time and all society.