Quoted By:
>The earliest Christian theologians, however, knew better than to limit the work of biblical interpretation to either of these extremes. Against a literalist or purely historical approach, for example, Origen in the third century asked rhetorically regarding the creation stories in the book of Genesis: “What intelligent person would believe that the first, second and third day, and the evening and morning, existed without the sun, moon and stars…and heaven? And who is so silly as to believe that God, after the manner of a farmer, ‘planted a paradise eastward in Eden’?”
>This is not skepticism. It affirms rather that biblical accounts often have more than one meaning, and that the primary meaning is rarely what is referred to as the “literal” or “historical” sense.
>Therefore Origen continues: “When God is said to ‘walk in paradise in the cool of the day’ and Adam to hide himself behind a tree, I do not think anyone will doubt that these are figurative expressions which indicate certain mysteries through a semblance of history and not through actual event.”
Then the protestant reformation came and those people took everything literally so now people in America believe in dinosaur Jesus.
