Opus 2025-339: Interpretation Tangents

I was sitting meditating on the nature of God and how He communicates.  I was thinking about his attribute of patience.  Somehow that took me to Genesis 1:1.  As I looked at the first verse in the Bible, I asked myself how would we analyze this and break it down for understanding.

(Gen 1:1 KJV)  In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

At first, it would seem to be pretty simple.  It is a literal statement.  Then I got to looking at the second half where it talks about the heaven and the Earth.  That could be literal.  It could also be a figure of speech expressing something more dynamic.

It’s got me off on a tangent of how different people interpret things different ways and I was looking for the labels to put on it.  Literal is pretty simple.  If I say that my God is a rock, He is a big stone.  I don’t think that’s what David meant when he talked about God being a rock.  I think he meant that God was mighty and strong.  He could have met that God is unchanging.  He could have met many different things.  He did not mean it literally.  What is a good inclusive word to encompass all of the different types of non-literal expressions?

“Literal” and “un-literal” lacked imagination.  I decided to experiment with the two different expressions of “literal”, and “literary”.  Literary can mean many different devices to enrich communication.  When you ask someone, “Cat got your tongue,” you can do it understanding that everybody knows you’re not talking about a feline sinking his teeth into your mouth.  The Old Testament especially is full of these kinds of expressions that are used again and again.  I think of things like, “the whole world”, “forever and ever”, and even such simple terms as “always” and “never”.

I may come up with a better term.  I may forget all about it tomorrow. But for now, as I look at biblical expressions and things I read in politics and history, I am going to think in terms of literal and literary.

homo unius libri