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If by "literal" you mean taking the words in their plain, common-sense meaning, yes, that is exactly what scripture states in the 11th chapter of Leviticus.

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If by "literal" you mean taking the words in their plain, common-sense meaning, yes, that is exactly what scripture states in the 11th chapter of Leviticus.

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The Hebrew word, “`owph”, translated as “fowls” in Leviticus 11:13 literally means “flying things”. Bats most certainly qualify as “flying things”.

The Hebrew word, “halak”, translated as “goeth upon” in Leviticus 11:21 literally means “walk”. Two of the grasshoppers legs are ‘hoppers’ which they use solely for hopping. When grasshoppers walk they walk on the other four, not all six.

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ORIGINAL: unclemonkey
The Hebrew word, “`owph”, translated as “fowls” in Leviticus 11:13 literally means “flying things”. Bats most certainly qualify as “flying things”.

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The Hebrew word, “halak”, translated as “goeth upon” in Leviticus 11:21 literally means “walk”. Two of the grasshoppers legs are ‘hoppers’ which they use solely for hopping. When grasshoppers walk they walk on the other four, not all six.

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ORIGINAL: essentialsaltes

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ORIGINAL: DanJames

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ORIGINAL: essentialsaltes

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ORIGINAL: DanJames
The work that God did to set the create the earth and set it in its path is one that will not be changed. The earth will not be destroyed and in the sense of Physics, the friction of the earth is enough that no force will cause a change in its path.

Again I don't know how literal 'literal' is, but the Earth's orbit is changed (slightly) by the gravitational effects of the other planets.

OTOH, I would really hate to definitively prove you wrong if it meant a giant asteroid hitting the earth in the next, oh, century or so.

An unfortunate response because what I said was not addressed. The influence of planets on the orbit of the earth doesn't address the fact that the Bible might not actually say that the earth is fixed and/or motionless. The word we translate as "move" doesn't say that the earth is not moving, but that it won't be destroyed or perturbed.

I don't see how my response is unfortunate or nonresponsive, since I brought up the fact that the earth's orbit is indeed perturbed.

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ORIGINAL: DanJames
Those that interpret the Bible as saying that the earth is the center of the solar system probably do so in error.

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That doesn't change the fact that the Bible very clearly states how the earth was created,

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and I think the point has been made that there isn't a whole lot of empirical scientific data to prove otherwise,

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Thus, one cannot read the words of the KJV with plain, common-sense meaning and come away with the correct interpretation.

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I expect that if you read the Hebrew text to a five-year old for whom Hebrew is their first language, s/he would think the word includes bats as birds unless and until you explained otherwise.

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This is akin to saying that because a rabbit uses its hind feet for hopping, it "walks" on two feet.

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ORIGINAL: unclemonkey

ORIGINAL:swan42

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Thus, one cannot read the words of the KJV with plain, common-sense meaning and come away with the correct interpretation.

The only flaw with your statement is that it is non-sequitur. The use of “common-sense” does not preclude studying an issue, but rather requires it. Researching the meaning of words in the original language is a common-sense thing to do.
It is when one throws “common-sense” out the window, as you have done here, that the atheistic arguments seem to make sense.

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Absolute agreement. Additionally, we have to study and research the culture and times of the authors of the Bible to better understand Scripture.

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I for one, refuse to believe God ever lied

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ORIGINAL: unclemonkey

Original:gluadys

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I expect that if you read the Hebrew text to a five-year old for whom Hebrew is their first language, s/he would think the word includes bats as birds unless and until you explained otherwise.

That is pure NONSENSE! What the 5 year-old Hebrew child would conclude is that bats and birds are both “flying things”.
Have you ever heard of anyone using the word “bird” when referring to an airplane. Do you suppose those who do actually think that airplanes should be in the same taxonomic classification as birds?

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In fact, the word “`owph”, used here occurs 70 times in the Old Testament and in 69 of those cases, except where it is translated as "flying" the "flying things" it is referring to means "birds". IOW, if this passage in Leviticus did not exist, creationists would be insisting it means "birds". (That is also how the Jewish scholars translated it into Greek in the Septuagint, and how Jerome rendered it into Latin in the Vulgate.)

Now what tells you that "owph" does not mean "birds"? What tells you that "flying things" does not mean "birds"? Not the text of the bible.

What tells you to translate "owph" as "flying thing" instead of as "fowl" or "bird" is that you know from science that a bat is not a bird. So you interpret the Hebrew in the light of your scientific knowledge and change what would be a simple, literal interpretation into one that agrees with science.

You do the same thing when you interpret passages about the sun moving and the earth remaining at rest. In order not to charge scripture with error you recast the simple, literal meaning into one that concords with your scientific knowledge.

Yet you refuse to use precisely the same method you yourself use in other situations when it comes to the age of the earth.

PS. I grew up in Saskatchewan where I saw grasshoppers by the thousands every summer. Tell me, when a grasshopper "walks" on its four legs what does it do with its hind legs---hold them off the ground so they won't get in the way?

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ORIGINAL: Jhud
This of course has nothing to do with it not being 'literal'. It lacks precision, but lacking precision is not the same as not being literal.

One can't (and shouldn't) infer that because a language or text isn't precise according to some particular system of thought or classification that therefore one can freely interpret the text as metaphor.

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ORIGINAL: drmark

I'm sorry, swan, but I've missed it between all the mudslinging. Please define or clarify the concept of "enumerical references". Thanks.

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Simply put, if you had not learned in science class that a bat is not a bird, you would have no reason not to accept the inclusion of "bat" in this text as an example of a "bird".

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ORIGINAL: swan42

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Simply put, if you had not learned in science class that a bat is not a bird, you would have no reason not to accept the inclusion of "bat" in this text as an example of a "bird".

The academic question is whether "owph" indicates "random flying object' or whether "owph" is specifically reserved for "birds".
The specific meaning of a word in a given culture is fluid; so it is non-trivial to discuss linguistics much further in this forum without significant homework.

What we can say with certainty is that "owph" could have easily meant something slightly different to Moses and something different again just 100 years later and something different again 200 years after that.

If one of us traveled back to 1776, we could have communicated with inhabitants of New York, but there would have been some difficulty despite speaking the same language. The difficulty grows with each passing decade. Hebrew speakers today might have been able to communicate with biblical style Hebrew speakers of yesteryear, but imperfect communication at best.

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ORIGINAL: swan42

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ORIGINAL: drmark

I'm sorry, swan, but I've missed it between all the mudslinging. Please define or clarify the concept of "enumerical references". Thanks.

Enumeration is when you label a collection of objects as 1st, 2nd, 3rd. A 3 car garage has a 1st parking spot, a 2nd parking spot and a 3rd parking spot. The distinction between 1st and 2nd might be arbitrary, or might use some other non-chronological distinction such as size or importance.

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ORIGINAL: ianz
Speaking as an 'interested mostly atheist', far be it from me to know whether this is a legitimate explanation, but it does seem to me to be clutching at straws a little. Everything in Genesis is in chronological order. Given that we are talking about creation, an event which revolves entirely about time, it would seem somewhat illogical to talk of the first seven days in anything other than chronological order. Otherwise, why would the bible link each event to a specific day?

Incidentally, it never ceases to amaze me how much debate is generated by a few paragraphs. To me it seems quite reasonable that Genesis, in terms of creation, is probably allegorical. Tasking someone with writing the true story of the entire creation in the space of a few sentences would surely have been a bridge too far, especially when one considers that other areas of the Bible spend entire chapters on far less significant details. (e.g. instructions for building the ark, alter, etc in Exodus.)

Regards, Ian

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ORIGINAL: gluadys
...

Those like myself who have no problem with biblical mythology note that the Genesis account was written at the time of Babylonian political ascendency--which led to the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile of the Jews to Babylon. It is in many ways a point-by-point refutation of Babylonian mythology as expressed in the Enuma Elish and parallels the latter in many points. This is another reason vegetation is associated with the third day while the sun, moon and stars are placed on the fourth day. Marduk, the chief god of the Babylonian pantheon, was a vegetation god, and by protocol takes precedence over his siblings who are associated with the heavenly bodies. In the Enuma Elish, it is Marduk who makes the heavenly stations (sun, moon, stars) as abodes for the other gods.

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Who said anything about interpreting it as a metaphor? Leviticus is not a particularly metaphor-rich text.

The question is: What does it mean to be "literal"?

Why, for example, do you say the Hebrew term is "imprecise". Are you not doing exactly what unclemonkey is doing? You have in your head a different system of classification than the biblical writers, one that you learned in science class, that says a bat is a mammal, not a bird. And on the basis of the science--which you learned but they didn't--you then claim they were using "imprecise" language.

Did the biblical authors think they were using "imprecise" language? Or was "owph" in their mind a perfectly good word which applied to bats as precisely as to birds. Indeed, so precisely that there was no need to consider that bats were something different from birds.

Simply put, if you had not learned in science class that a bat is not a bird, you would have no reason not to accept the inclusion of "bat" in this text as an example of a "bird". The Hebrew writers clearly included it in the category of "owph"and if we had only the other 69 references in scripture, we would certainly assume that "owph" = "bird".

But a difference in scientific framework leads to a different "literal" intepretation.

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The distinction between 1st and 2nd might be arbitrary, or might use some other non-chronological distinction such as size or importance.

Speaking as an 'interested mostly atheist', far be it from me to know whether this is a legitimate explanation, but it does seem to me to be clutching at straws a little.

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ORIGINAL: Jhud
That "particular system of thought or classification" would be the Linnaean system of classification, with which the authors of the Bible were of course unfamiliar. So I was being fairly clear in saying that according to our currently accepted human derived system of classification, the text is imprecise; but this doesn't reduce at all our ability to understand what is being said and why, and to derive form it the truths contained therein.

Now feel free to copy me again and pretend you are offering substantive disagreement.

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Oh, I agree with what you are saying. But you have missed the point that the discussion is not about what Leviticus 11:19 means, but about what it means to understand the text "literally".

btw, contrary to the previous assertion "owph" doesn't mean "flying creatures" either, for in v. 20 it refers to "owph" that creep upon all fours. Unfortunately they don't give an example of this category.

Which makes me wonder how they classified the ostrich which neither flies nor creeps on all fours.

I still maintain that if presented with this chapter alone and referring only to it and other scripture, the most natural way to understand the text is that a bat is the same sort of thing as a bird. It takes both observation of nature (which the Hebrews were certainly capable of) and some axioms of what differences take precedence (mammalian traits vs the capacity to fly) to separate the bat from the birds. That is why it has to be explained, both to ourselves and to others, that the text doesn't really mean (as it appears to say) that a bat is a bird.

But the fact that it must be explained means either that the text as it stands is not "literal" or that "literal" is not necessarily the same thing as "what the text clearly says". Instead the "literal" meaning is one that needs to be pried out of the text using a) extra-biblical knowledge of the meaning of the Hebrew in the historical context and b) extra-biblical knowledge of nature and modern scientific descriptions of nature.

Literalists often suggest that they simply read the bible "as it is" without "interpretation". Or, when interpretation is necessary, they use the rule that "scripture interprets scripture" and it is unnecessary to go outside of scripture to figure out what scripture means.

Clearly this is not the case with Leviticus 11:19. Nor is it in many other relevant texts. Far more than they realize, literalists do rely on extra-biblical information to interpret the "literal" meaning of the text.