Anat

You know, when we read a poem from the 20th century that says
"...whilst in a struggling street
bleeding raspberry sunsets
you bind me into sheaves"

(From Natan Alterman's "P'gisha l'ein ketz" - Endless encounter, my own translation from Hebrew)
I don't think many of us would feel the urge to write a polemic about how the red colors observed at sunset are caused by the bending of light by the atmosphere when the sun's position is low relative to the observer's horizon, with red being the longest wavelength in the visible spectrum etc and not by raspberry juice seeping through openings in the earth. We know what experience and knowledge would be available to a poet of similar background and we naturally assume the description to be metaphoric.

This is harder to do for a writer who had lived in the distant past, especially in a culture we know as pre-scientific in many areas, but I don't see a reason to assume they did *not* use metaphore.

jeffevnz

As long as it is recognized as obviously mythic, I agree that it's interesting, at least in the same way as Beowulf and the Iliad.

But you have to remember that millions of people believe this shit is literally true. Ridiculous is the only word for that.

davidbach

I agree but for one thing. You may not enjoy Beowulf, the Iliad or Genesis. But please do not disparage these works as literature. If there were Beowulfians and Iliadists worshipping these works, would that diminish the value of the literature? Or would they become "shit"?

Teh Hobbit

What is a day? In a period in time in which there was no earth or sun, how long would a day be? How can we criticize him for the amount of time, when we don't even know what that amount of time was?

When I was a theist, I would say that the Genesis account is one of those things that just has to be read in the original language. It's complex and the original hebrew allows for a mich wider understanding than our rough english translations.