Hi, people interpret the Bible many ways, but I'm advocating interpreting the Bible literally, and it's not as confusing as it sounds. I'm Dr. Fred, and you're tuned to Study, Grow, Know. Welcome to Study, Grow, Know, where we discuss theology, prophecy, and current political issues from a conservative biblical perspective. Here's your host, Dr. Fred Girubo. Welcome to StudyGrow now. I'm your host, Dr. Fred. Now, we're beginning a series of video lessons that deal with interpreting the Bible literally. In fact, the first book I wrote, titled, Interpreting the Bible Literally, is not as confusing as it sounds. It really isn't. It's pretty easy, in fact, actually, once you get the hang of it and understand what you're supposed to be doing. Now, people tend to make understanding the Bible very difficult. In fact, they make it far more difficult than it should be. So for the next few weeks we're going to be spending time dealing with the subject of interpreting the Bible literally and why it's important to do so. And I'd like to make it clear right from the outset that I'm not talking about taking the Bible literalistically, which doesn't take into account parables, metaphors, idioms, and other figures of speech. I'm talking about understanding the Bible in its literal and most ordinary or plain sense. The way I believe God intended for his word to be understood. Now consider the English language. Within it are roughly a quarter of a million words that can be used in conversation, both written and spoken. Now, in conjunction with that, we use similes, metaphors, puns, including chiasms, pangrams, tongue twisters, and the always fun oxymoron, hyperbole, alliteration, euphemisms, irony, paradox, personification, understatements, and many other forms of figures of speech. These are all specific parts of language designed to create a special effect by using words in unique ways. No one that I know of would read or hear a metaphor and attempt to take it literally. The same is true for a simile or any other form of figurative language. So what's the problem then? You would think that for the people who accuse literalists like myself often enough about failing to take certain things literally, that the Bible did not have any figures of speech in it. Well, in point of fact, the Bible does utilize figures of speech. Robert I. Bradshaw from the United Kingdom has a website which includes various definitions of figures of speech and how some of them are used in the Bible. His definition of a figure of speech says, idioms or figures of speech are combinations of words whose meaning cannot be determined by the examination of the meanings of the words that make it up. Or to put it another way, an idiom uses a number of words to represent a single object, person, or concept. And he sums up the problem in his next sentence when he says, quote, unless you recognize when an idiom is being used, you can easily misunderstand the meaning of the text, unquote. Now the main reason I decided to write this book is to attempt at least to dispel the myth that if a person is a literalist, he's required to take every word of the Bible literally. This is absolutely untrue, and for people to insist on it, well, I think it's unreasonable. Now, if there were people in our society called literalists who routinely took every word of every conversation or written work absolutely literally, with no exceptions, then there might be justification for insisting that these same literalists do that where the Bible is concerned. However, that's not the case. The trouble is that words used in language are, for the most part, not singular in meaning. Most English words have more than one meaning, and many have many meanings. Determining that particular meaning in each specific usage is tantamount to finding the actual meaning of the text itself, which is made up of all those individual words. Now, besides figures of speech, though, which I would imagine people worldwide would agree that they shouldn't be taken literally but are simply They are for literary devices used for a specific purpose. Besides that, is there any other reason not to take portions of the Bible literally? Yes, of course there is. Reading through the Psalms, or Proverbs, or the Song of Solomon, or just about any of the major or minor prophets in the Old Testament, it is extremely easy to know when figures of speech are being used, when they pop up. For instance, let's consider Proverbs 120. It says this, Wisdom cries aloud in the street, in the markets she raises her voice." Well, here we see that wisdom is not only able to speak, cries aloud in the street, but is also a woman. She raises her voice. You know, I've actually run across a few people who believe this to be literal, referencing women. Normally though, the average person understands this as a personification, the way it was obviously meant when it was written. That's the way it should be taken. There are many instances of this type of word usage in Scripture. and no one that I'm aware of would actually expect someone who takes the Bible literally to take passages like this hyper-literally. In fact, to take these sentences literally means to simply determine their meaning. Years ago there was a printed magazine called the Wittenberg Door and in one particular issue that I recall there was a drawing of an extremely weird-looking individual. The caption read something like, For our little or less friends from the Song of Solomon, Well, it was a bit funny to see a woman with a neck made out of bricks and other things described in the biblical text. The truth of the matter is that many people see literalists that way, as having to see everything in scripture literally. Even those who grant a little wiggle room to the literalists, allowing them to understand passages like the one from Proverbs as a figure of speech or personification, They insist that all other parts of scripture which are not obviously some type of figure of speech must be taken as written. To not do so means that the literalist picks and chooses in order to achieve their desired end of having the Bible say what they want it to say in order to support their own claims about the Bible. That's what they say about people like myself who understand the Bible literally. Well, it's the intention of my book, as well as these video lessons, to eradicate at least some of these false notions or, at the minimum, cause people to ask questions. The ideal would be for people to stop placing the literalist in a space so small that there's no room to breathe, much less interpret scripture. Is that going to happen? Who knows? One can only hope though, right? Well, throughout the remaining portions of these lessons, we are going to be taking the time to discuss what it really means to take the Bible literally, as well as provide examples of where it may appear as though the literalist is not taking scripture literally. Thank you for your willingness to journey through these pages, and hopefully the trip will be labeled worthwhile when all is said and done. Thank you for joining me today. I am Dr. Fred, and you've been tuned to Study. Grow. Know. You've been listening to Study, Grow, Know with Dr. Fred DeRuvo. Please join us each week for new broadcasts that deal with theology, prophecy, and political issues from a biblical, conservative perspective.