Genre and Reading the Bible on its own terms

Ezekiel 31:1-32:32
Hebrews 12:14-29
Psalm 113:1-114:8
Proverbs 27:18-20


Words can sometimes get confusingly misused and misunderstood and in Christian circles one of those words is "literal." This word is often confused with the word "accurate" but the two are far from being the same.  Let me give you two examples outside of the Bible.  If someone from France were to point outside and say to you, "il pleut des cordes" he would not be telling you that there was a freak shower of ropes occurring but a literal translation of what he said was "It's raining ropes."  Raining ropes might be a literal word for word translation but it's definitely not an accurate one.


Secondly we all know the Irish Blessing that starts with "May the road rise to meet you" and I'm sure you have wondered what on earth that means, it sounds like a description of falling and that does not sound like the start of a blessing, "may you be thumped by the tarmac!"  What it actually means is "may you be prosperous."  Road in Irish doubles up as a metaphor for business / prosperity and the rising part is a metaphor for increasing and prospering.  Hence may your money / wealth / happiness rise.  It sounds a lot less poetic when you put it like that.


Literal does not equal accurate and in the two cases above literal translation can mean downright inaccurate translation.  So why, oh why have so many Christians got themselves into a huge rut about reading everything in the Bible literally?  Why have we painted ourselves in to theological corners over creation and the end times and so many other parts of scripture that have important and life changing truths to tell the world because we have insisted on taking them literally?


What brought on this rant?  It's all Ezekiel's fault.  Ezekiel happily plays about with the idea of Eden as a metaphor in chapter 31.  He describes Assyria and Egypt as trees in the Garden of Eden.  He treats Eden no more literally than the person who wrote Psalm 114 talks about the mountains skipping like lambs in a literal fashion.  We have to start taking the Bible on its own terms.  Some of it is poetry, some history, some legal code, some parable, some a very odd genre called apocalyptic, some is song, some proverbs or wise says and on and on we could go.  The Bible is not tied to one genre and we have to use our brains when we read it and not tie ourselves or the text into a literalistic straight-jacket.  


If it does not demand a literal reading then why should we try to force one on it.  By doing so we can totally lose the meaning.