[QUOTE="unholymight"][QUOTE="Teenaged"]An allegorical text can be judged as such based on the styIe, the plausibility of what it describes, the traditions of religions which shows us a pattern of using allegory to convey messages etc.
To me most important is the styIe, which encompasses the expressive means an author uses, his/her "styIe" etc.
As for if the peopleof the time thought it was literal. I think to them literal and metaphorical had no distinction. Allegory was more frequent in the ancient times, because it is used when humans try to explain things they cannot otherwise and back then there were more things unknown to us than today.
In short I would say that to them, allegory was their literal truth. Judging by the social conditions back then, the skeptics were too few. Today the average person is many times more skeptical than the average person then. Most people lived simple lives and had no interest to discern allegory from literal narration. Especially in issues where "naturally" allegory was used. I dont think the use of allegory is always conscious and thats why I dont believe a distinction between literal and allegorical is existant to all people. And to my perception most people back then had no such distinction formed in their heads.
So the answer to this no matter what it is, wont be enlightening imo.
And even if it was I disagree that it has any role to play in the issue.
Teenaged
I see. I was wondering whether the fact that people interpreted the Bible differently over time caused the Word of God to be different for different time periods. This would suggest an evolution of the religion, where it is changed such that only the parts that make sense in a contemporary or in this case modern context are left behind, and any parts that do not make this kind of sense have found new uses as metaphors that do make sense in the contemporary context. This would conflict somewhat with the view that Christianity and the Word of God is constant and unchanging.I think what has changed over time is not so much an arising tendency to discard texts as allegorical but a tendency to scrutinise more and more.But scrutinising doesnt lead to one way.
A person that will start scrutinising the Bible will then find themselves in the dichotomy allegory/literal narration, because in the process of scrutinising the purpose is justification and rationalisation, and defining the text in this linguistic dualistic principle you achieve a certain set of rules by witch you treat your text, and thats important; to have a solid "philosophy" as the basis of your study. And then they choose. I cant say or even guess what makes people choose though.
Of course others deny that there is such a dichotomy (or better put they dont see why the whole book is either allegorical or literal) so they are in the middle one could say.
BTW I am not saying the last group of people are in the wrong. They are most probably right imo.
Yes, this does make sense, considering that it was not very long ago that people could freely scrutinize religion (such as Darwin, who likely feared the prosecution). But I think that the trend of increasing amounts of text becoming viewed as allegorical did occur and arose as scientific advancements were able to explain more about the unknown. For example, before absolute dating techniques came along there could have easily been people who had taken literally that the age of the Earth was only a few thousand years. After the scientific advancements came along, that one section would have converted from being literal to allegorical.I see that there are many ways to read the Bible but perhaps the advancement of science changed the guidelines by which people use to judge a section as either allegorical or literal.
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