Literal Interpretations v. Metaphor, Or: Are All of You Fucking Morons?

Biblical literalness has always irked me. It's fucking obvious that God didn't intend for us to read the Bible literally, and then only read the Bible. There are a hell of a lot of metaphorical and literary- not literal, literary- devices used in the Bible, to great effect; the problem is people take these things and try to apply them literally, which is stupendously silly.

The Flood. I'll just use this. I won't note how Genesis is basically a shortened version of evolution, told so people who didn't even get how genetics worked (except in a very, very rough way- "we breed these cows we'll get cows like them... wonder why?") would understand that God made everything. I won't get into the whole discussion of the fact that if you don't accept evolution as true, then where the hell did Cain get his wife? Did he bang one of his sisters?

No sense.

But now, the Flood. Let's talk about the Flood. The basic story is this, stripped of all stupidity:

The world went evil. Like, fucked-up evil. People doing murders, mass murders, rapes, theft, horror, left and right. General madness. There's only a few good people left on the planet, headed by Noah, who's basically the rabbi of this remaining congregation (which gets absorbed into his family by marriage, making him patriarch of the whole kit and kaboodle).

So God decides it's time to start over, and Noah spends five hundred years building a boat big enough to handle all the animals and his family, and preaching, preaching to try and get others to join. I don't remember if that was successful, not successful, or left up to the reader.

But anyway, afterwards God floods the entire world, and lets Noah and his family live. And then, at the end, God promises to never do it again- and creates the rainbow as a symbol of his promise.

So that's the story, highly abridged. What does it mean?

A literal interpretation is silly. It ends up saying God flooded the world, which isn't possible because there isn't enough frigging water, not on the whole planet. Secondly, it says God killed everybody, an event I think we'd notice, and that everyone is descended from Noah, something that, genetically, I think we'd notice.

Now, metaphorically, what does it say? You could be an idiot and say God is vengeful, but that's because you're stupid. No, what one does it look at it in light of the rest of the Bible, which focuses on God's love for the weak, and well, flat out states that God is love.

No, what it's saying, through literary devices, is actually heart-warming. It says that God will protect even one good man (Sodom and Gomorrah are the other class examples, where God was willing to spare an entire city of rapists if there could be found but a few good people.) It says that God never forgets those who have done good, and he will always reward his faithful, no matter how few there are.

It also uses the classic literary device of "the bad guy"; sometimes, a dude is a villain and that's all you need to know. That persons or persons is representing evil, they're not meant to be thought about. In this case, the rest of the world serves this purpose, not to say that everyone is evil, but to make a point- that one good family will be spared, even if literally everyone else on the planet is evil. That's a pretty damn bold and heroic thing for God to say.

As for the Flood, serves the literary purpose of general destruction and God's awesomeness, not a theological point- except that water cleanses, perhaps a symbolism there, but I'd not attribute anything to God on this basis.

But the rainbow? That tells me something else. God so hated to kill all those people that he decided never to do it again. It was a sign of how much God loved the world that destroying it, no matter how evil it was, just about broke His heart. (and probably was also a meta-literary device to make sure no later authors would ever do the same thing with a different story in the Bible)

This, to me, is the core of God. Good, love, forgiveness. I wonder how anyone else can see a different God in these books- perhaps because they are being literal. Some books are actually "historical", in the sense of involving real people, real events. I also leave great miracles up to everyone else- I've no doubt God could do those things, but I've doubt that he did do those things (which is a very different proposition).