[phd514]

I think it's helpful to point out that the Bible contains a variety of types of literature including historical narrative, poetry, etc., some of which uses figurative language that is not intended to be taken literally.

We all understand this when we use modern language such as "sunrise" which is not literally true (the sun does not actually "rise" in the sky though it appears that way to the casual observer) even though we're educated enough to understand basic astronomical phenomena such as the rotation of the earth giving rise to daytime and nighttime.

A Biblical literalist who takes figurative language in the Bible literally would end up making the same mistake that someone taking "sunrise" literally would. This is not at all an attempt to classify as figurative language all controversial or supernatural claims of the Bible (its claim that Jesus was crucified, buried, and raised from the dead is clearly supernatural and impossible to classify as figurative), but so many of the lists of contradictory claims in the Bible rely on wooden interpretations of what is pretty clearly figurative language.

[throwaway0b1]

Thank you for making this point. It is important to recognize that the Bible does make use of a variety of literary techniques (eg. psalms, parables, etc. especially). However, there are vast swathes of history throughout; it isn't just a book of fictional stories.

[CivBase]

I think when people talk about a "literal" interpretation of the Bible, they mean that it uses human language (including figures of speech like "sunrise", number rounding/approximation, etc) to describe literal, historical events with exceptions for explicit fictions or metaphors (such as psalms or parables).