Proclaimer Blog
Literal, huh?
I have just started reading The Lost World of Genesis One reviewed in EN this month. Too soon to say what I think of it. However, the early chapters did get me thinking about what we mean when we talk about the Bible being true or literal. The trouble is that this is a concept that is fundamentally understood by those who comment on evangelical Christiansity and even those who don't understand these things from within. To understand the literal meaning of a passage or text does not mean to read it at its more obvious level, nor at its apparent face value. Literal, in terms of biblical interpretation, means to understand a passage as it was originally intended to be understood. That's why reading a text is not just about, well, reading a text, but rather working at it, seeing what the author originally intended.