Not the poster, but as a Christian, no, I find the idea of the Bible being taken literally as rather surprising, and a rather recent invention.
Just on the face of it, there are 'books' in the Bible meant as history, books meant as 'self-help', despondent mullings on the meaning of life, a love letter, personal recountings, letters written to others...these are all kinds of authors and approaches here, and so it strikes me as silly to take all of them literally. I mean, Jesus is quoted as saying "Go tell that fox", when speaking of Herod; there is no other mention of Herod being anything other than human. Clearly, if the Christian message is to be taken as truth, it shows that God is able to speak in metaphor (as well as interesting translation differences; for instance, the word for 'day' in the creation story is a word with a number of translations ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom )
So, how do things that seem antiquated apply now? Well, some parts of it -are- antiquated, in that they were meant for a specific time, and not now. Chesterton had a number of beautiful assertions in his book Orthodoxy, to the effect that Christianity is necessarily paradoxical, because -people- are paradoxical. To take that here, from my perspective (and there are many) morality can be both absolute and relativistic; what is 'good' is absolute, but what is treated as 'good' at a given time is relative to that time. You know that slavery is evil, but could you go back 4000 years and convince people of that? No. You would just alienate them, and likely get yourself killed. But you -could- convince them to at least treat their slaves better. You could design a moral code that would in time lead to them stopping slavery, by just introducing the idea that slaves are humans, with rights. If we credit the idea there is a God, and that evolution is a thing that that God uses, then the idea of allowing a moral idea to evolve into a fuller fulfillment of itself, over time, as people think, and talk, and develop, is an unsurprising thing for that God to do.
As to stoning adulterers, and a number of similar things; don't misunderstand what was a legal code with a moral one. Yes, it was influenced by morals (same as our own law is), but the punishment was a legal code to be adopted by a people, and was a symptom of the time. No Christian but the most fundamental would say we, now, should adopt stoning as the appropriate punishment for adultery. Interestingly, the Bible makes it clear "the wages of sin (is) death", but that that's a moral issue between man and God. Any actual judgement indicated to be carried out between men is toward a legal system, and its rationale is much the same as our own, to prevent people from doing it and/or to allow for carrying out some semblance of imperfect justice (since flawed man judging flawed man will necessarily be imperfect).
Similarly, many of the Old Testament rules were particular to the context of the time, and can only be understood in understanding the culture at that time. For why not wearing a diverse set of fabrics, have a look here - https://www.gotquestions.org/different-types-of-fabric.html
I mean, Jesus is quoted as saying "Go tell that fox", when speaking of Herod; there is no other mention of Herod being anything other than human. Clearly, if the Christian message is to be taken as truth, it shows that God is able to speak in metaphor
24% of the US believes the bible is the literal word of god[0].
Knowing some evangelicals personally... they would say Herod literally told the fox. Through god Herod was able to speak to the fox.
Remember, in adam and eve, the snake and eve have a conversation. So clearly it is possible that animals can talk. Many christians believe adam and eve is a literal telling of what happened.
No, it's Jesus -calling- Herod a fox. I have never heard an evangelical say "Yes, Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great, was actually a fox. A literal fox, canidae vulpus."
The passage is -
At that time some Pharisees came to Jesus and said to him, "Leave this place and go somewhere else. Herod wants to kill you." He replied, "Go tell that fox, 'I will keep on driving out demons and healing people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal.'
There's basically three ways to take that passage (across translations, I might add, though I don't know the aramaic); either Herod was a literal fox, there was a random fox that Jesus in a complete non-sequitor pointed to and told the Pharisees to talk to ("Talk to the fox because the Lord isn't listening" I guess?), or Jesus showed that metaphor is totes a thing the Christian God understands and uses (which would make sense given all the parables and whatnot).
Sure, but it also equates to a judgement. If God is the genesis of all life, all good things, etc, then being outside of his will equates to death, and being/doing/etc outside of his will is also what equates to sin. While that is a state of being, it's a state defined by the will of another, i.e., an implicit judgement. I agree that the terminology isn't great though; judging is something that implies a careful consideration of a person's state, whereas to an all knowing God, judgement would be simply a categorization that takes zero time or effort.
Maybe I misread you, but I thought you were suggesting something to the effect of Paul telling people that sinners, as judged by humans, should be put to death.
Ah, no. I was saying that, basically, any punishment proscribed for a sin in Talmudic law was specifically to create a -legal- framework, for the time, and has to be viewed that way. From a moral standpoint, the punishment for every sin, in God's eyes, is death, but that that's a punishment that only has meaning in a person's relationship to and/or with God. It has no bearing on how man interacts with man (and in fact would run very much counter to what God says -should- dictate our interactions with one another).
It was basically in response to the above poster saying the Old Testament proscribed stoning for adultery; yes, but that isn't a moral statement that that -should- be, forevermore, the punishment for it, and being a Christian doesn't mean you have to believe adulterers should be stoned. Rather, it was a legal statement for that time, that that was the punishment to be carried out.
Just on the face of it, there are 'books' in the Bible meant as history, books meant as 'self-help', despondent mullings on the meaning of life, a love letter, personal recountings, letters written to others...these are all kinds of authors and approaches here, and so it strikes me as silly to take all of them literally. I mean, Jesus is quoted as saying "Go tell that fox", when speaking of Herod; there is no other mention of Herod being anything other than human. Clearly, if the Christian message is to be taken as truth, it shows that God is able to speak in metaphor (as well as interesting translation differences; for instance, the word for 'day' in the creation story is a word with a number of translations ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom )
So, how do things that seem antiquated apply now? Well, some parts of it -are- antiquated, in that they were meant for a specific time, and not now. Chesterton had a number of beautiful assertions in his book Orthodoxy, to the effect that Christianity is necessarily paradoxical, because -people- are paradoxical. To take that here, from my perspective (and there are many) morality can be both absolute and relativistic; what is 'good' is absolute, but what is treated as 'good' at a given time is relative to that time. You know that slavery is evil, but could you go back 4000 years and convince people of that? No. You would just alienate them, and likely get yourself killed. But you -could- convince them to at least treat their slaves better. You could design a moral code that would in time lead to them stopping slavery, by just introducing the idea that slaves are humans, with rights. If we credit the idea there is a God, and that evolution is a thing that that God uses, then the idea of allowing a moral idea to evolve into a fuller fulfillment of itself, over time, as people think, and talk, and develop, is an unsurprising thing for that God to do.
As to stoning adulterers, and a number of similar things; don't misunderstand what was a legal code with a moral one. Yes, it was influenced by morals (same as our own law is), but the punishment was a legal code to be adopted by a people, and was a symptom of the time. No Christian but the most fundamental would say we, now, should adopt stoning as the appropriate punishment for adultery. Interestingly, the Bible makes it clear "the wages of sin (is) death", but that that's a moral issue between man and God. Any actual judgement indicated to be carried out between men is toward a legal system, and its rationale is much the same as our own, to prevent people from doing it and/or to allow for carrying out some semblance of imperfect justice (since flawed man judging flawed man will necessarily be imperfect).
Similarly, many of the Old Testament rules were particular to the context of the time, and can only be understood in understanding the culture at that time. For why not wearing a diverse set of fabrics, have a look here - https://www.gotquestions.org/different-types-of-fabric.html