On one level, I do think we should interpret the bible literally

Well, on one level, I think that any myth only “works” if you’re able to believe it literally. Because when you do, your mind believes it is really happening to you and it has a different effect than if you simply take it as an allegory, which may be valuable too of course.

The way I like to think about it: Have you ever been going up or down a staircase in the dark? When you reach the end, you go to step on another stair, only to find out it’s not there, and your foot sort of jolts down to the floor unexpectedly? It’s because you physically believed there was another stair and thus it had a literal effect on your body…

The skeptical , show me people, think it is clever or unclever allegory.

The old joke ;
It was 3 o’clock in the morning on a Sunday morning and a musician asked another musician after a gig, if he knew a place were they could go and get ribs.
The musician said , you want ribs at 3 o’clock in the morning . ?
Yes I do know a place.
The first musician said , great, where .?

The other musician said, in the Bible. You can find any damn thing you want in the bible. Even ribs at 3 o’clock in the morning. ~!~

Could the point be persistance? open willingness and patience?

Thanks, I needed a good kick in the ‘hip’!

faith is universal. When you really do have faith then belief becomes irrelavent. Beliefs are simply ideas plus emotion; emotion being the “glue” that holds the idea to yourself. Faith is beyond all of this.

Awesome! I just might quote this in an upcoming podcast!

There is no reason to believe it has any basis in fact

There is also no reason to believe that it was ever *meant* to be taken as fact. Many scholars have suggested that Biblical literalism is a thoroughly modern invention. I tend to agree.

If you read that L’Engle interview, which I forgot to link to, you’ll also see her address this in a more useful way, I think:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4926262/site/newsweek/

Oh wait, no, this is from a different interview, though she does touch on that there. Here’s a better link:

http://www.timboucher.com/old/2004/11/21/madeleine-lengle-on-facts-truth/

“Facts are limited. It is a fact that we’re sitting here, but whether any truth comes out of this meeting is something else again. We don’t always know [truth]. I write stories because that’s how I look for truth. I was looking for truth when I was writing Wrinkle. We live in a world where it’s very difficult for people to understand that a story can be truthful and not factual.

“Nothing that’s worth anything as far as living our lives is concerned is in the realm of fact‹it’s all in the realm of truth. Jesus was talking about a man with a plank of wood in his eye. It’s a true story, it’s not factual; it’s about people who are slow to recognize their own faults and too quick to point out others’ flaws.”

L’Engle notes that similar stories can be found in all major religious traditions. “But we’re told to outgrow stories‹they’re only for kids. That’s one of the most terrible things that has happened to us as a people; we’ve been impaled upon literalism; it’s a great crippler.

[...] Truth transcends facts. If I don’t believe it, it isn’t true. I’m going to stay on the side of truth no matter how much it hurts. Facts end; stories are infinite. Stories have a richness that goes way beyond fact.

Just my 2 cents.

-some guy

maybe jacob got himself circumsized (or worse) with that angel’s “touch.”

that would have a much deeper symbolic significance than merely dislocating a hip.

just sayin.

One daughter maybe.? Two daughters.? Mmmm, what a great story.

The bible is full of blood , guts , incest, terror, murder, everything. Maybe the return of O.J. could be as a bible story narrator on fox.

Ofcourse we all have a little edomite in us so this makes this story a classic.

(Hebrew Bible was my teacher’s forte, but he did like to spin a lot of the stories. For instance, he thought the story of Lot screwing his two daughts was really a story the Hebrews were telling about their neighboring tribes (the descendents of Lot). Basically, “yeah, those Edomites over there to the west are a bunch of inbred motherfuckers”).

Isn’t it weird that the “angel” had to leave before morning? Is this our old buddy Lestat?

Vedic faith was thus typical of pre-Axial religion. It did not develop or change; it conformed to an archetypal order and did not aspire to anything different. This deeply conservative spirituality sought security in a reality that was timeless and changeless.

One need only think of Socrates, who was never content to accept traditional certainties as final, however august they might be. He believed that instead of recieving knowledge from the outside, each person must find the truth within his own being. Socrates questioned everything, infecting his interlocutors with his own perplexity, since confusion was the beginning of the philosophical quest.

One batch of tales centered upon an “ancestor” called Abram. Another revolved around the figure of a Canaanite leader Jacob.

As the Sojourn and Exodus narratives is an adaption by Israel of an earlier Canaanite tradition, so the Joseph story is the Hebrew exemplar of a widespread story line in use in Egypt and the Levant at the time the Pentateuch was being committed to writing. There is no reason to believe it has any basis in fact- The absence of the story from the earlier tradition in the “prophets” speaks against such a belief - and to read it as history is quite wrong headed.