{"id":4015,"date":"2024-04-29T02:45:00","date_gmt":"2024-04-29T02:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=4015"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:32:25","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:32:25","slug":"literally-or-seriously","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=4015","title":{"rendered":"LITERALLY OR SERIOUSLY?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Here&#8217;s another worthwhile aphorism from Dr. John Walton:\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Some insist that we read the Bible literally,\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">but it is better to read the Bible <b><i>seriously<\/i><\/b>.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">To read the Bible seriously, we must give thought to which parts of Scripture the original authors meant for their original audience to take literally and which parts were meant to be understood figuratively.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The strict literalist never entertains such questioning. To their way of thinking, unless the Scripture on the table is poetry or a parable, it is meant to be taken literally.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is pure ignorance.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Literally.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It is a lack of awareness of differences in cultures and literary genres, and a lack of imagination regarding the nature of God&#8217;s revelation.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s another worthwhile aphorism from Dr. John Walton:\u00a0 Some insist that we read the Bible literally,\u00a0 but it is better to read the Bible seriously. To read the Bible seriously, we must give thought to which parts of Scripture the original authors meant for their original audience to take literally and which parts were meant [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4015"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4015\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4016,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4015\/revisions\/4016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}