The COMMANDMENTS i think are metaphors based on fact.

Seventh-day Adventists do believe in the divinity of Jesus.

That question is more difficult than one may think if our purpose is interpretation. Take the shortest verse in the Bible: "Jesus wept." Is that literal? What kind of weeping did He do? Did He shed tears? In the end it really does not matter until someone insists that they have the authority to insist that you can only be accepted if you do what is in the Bible. This simple historical account would then be turned into a doctrinie requiring us to weep at funerals because Jesus did. And so on . . . ad nauseum.

To me the scriptures have many levels of meaning... and should be seen as containing history, art, literature, culture, philosophy and of course religion through out... as such there are many metaphors and symbols. My understanding is that for us Baha'is, the Bible should be understood in spiritual terms overall.

- Art

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"it benefits us to be thoughtful, not of the glory of our minds, but rather, above all else, of the glory of God."
- Johannes Kepler

Yes... thank you... i think i got a little type happy and place them in the same category as the rest.

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[belief is NOT the same as TRUTH]

As a Christian living today there are a number of voices who claim to be speaking for all of us, they assail science and insist that we must literally accept every word in the Bible as true. In doing so they fail both themselves and others for much in the Bible is parable or metaphor. When we, as Christians, insist that parable must be accepted as literally true we put a stumbling block of, well, biblical proportions in the way of earnest seekers.
It is for such seekers that I write this article.

Should you happen to visit the Answers in Genesis site you will find, among other things the following comment,

"... We return to the question which forms the title of this article. Should Genesis be taken literally?

Answer: If we apply the normal principles of biblical exegesis (ignoring pressure to make the text conform to the evolutionary prejudices of our age), it is overwhelmingly obvious that Genesis was meant to be taken in a straightforward, obvious sense as an authentic, literal, historical record of what actually happened..."

But are they right?

Modern science shows that the earth is billions of years in age, it comes to this conclusion in a number of ways and I recommend the following site for information even a non-scientist can understand, The Age of the Earth .

Is there then a meeting place between science and the Book of Genesis? Yes, there is and it comes from the understanding that Genesis is not a science text-book, that it was written in order to understand, not HOW the world came to be but WHY.

Genesis 1 & 2 are parables, they are parables about why there is an earth, why humans and animals and plants share it in common and why there is pain and suffering in the world. Parables are stories which may or may not be literally true but which imparts to us an important spiritual truth. In the New Testament we have parables such as the Good Samaritan, the evil vine-dressers; the parable of the prodigal son.

None of these New Testament stories are literal fact but they are true in a deeper, more meaningful way. So it is with the parables of Genesis 1 & 2. In them we are not being told that the world was created in six days, six thousand years ago. We are, however, being told that the world was created by God's intention, that human beings are made in the image and likeness of God and that God is a close to us as a friend who walks and talks with us in the cool of the day.

Adam and Eve, the Fall, the Serpent, Noah and his Ark may or may not be literal truth but they are markers of ultimate truth, of truth which can be held only in the imagination, of truth which can only be shown in images and symbols.

Genesis can only be understood in that it is our story, each of us is Adam, each of us is Eve, we misunderstand the Genesis parables when we fail to realize that they are addressed to US. Genesis, then, is our unique, individual story told as parable it is not some pre-sscientific attempt to explain how all things came to be but rather a profound series of meditations on why things should be in the first place.

Once we realize this, we can see there are no contradictions, can be no contradictions between the findings of science and God's word to us in Genesis. Let us happily give up our insistence on a literal Genesis and seek the deeper, foundational religious truths that await us there.

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"True godliness doesn't turn men out of the world, but enables them to live better in it, and excites their endeavor to mend it: not hide their candle under a bushel, but set it upon a table in a candlestick." - William Penn, 1682

To a large extent, I really don't think it makes much of a difference. Scriptural accounts, no matter they took place literally or are allegorical, are in the scriptures for one main reason: to enhance faith. Therefore, they would be expected to be largely subjective in nature. In that context, what difference does it really make if the accounts of the supposed actions are accurate?

Shalom,
Vern

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"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."-- Einstein

On the contrary, there is every reason to believe that it is a remarkable pre-scientific "meditation" on how things came to be and what implications that should be drawn from this understanding. Religion is always an (imperfect) attempt to integrate cosmos and ethos.

Unless it's viewed as allegory.

Shalom,
Vern

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"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."-- Einstein

Of course, but what it was and how it is now viewed are not necessarily the same thing, and attempts to recast narrative as allegory strikes me as both unnecessary and unhelpful. Here I obviously disagree with the likes of Maimonides.

On the other hand, the allegorical richness of narratives such as the Exodus/Conquest certainly played a role in sustaining this lore across generations of orality. Myth, too, is subject to the sieve of 'natural selection'.