Opinion of the Bible's literalism/historic-truth/scientific-truth/perfection?

[Del Tachi]

You're asking 11 separate questions as a yes or no question, dude

No. I can see how some might see it as 2 questions, even though it's really still one question. But not more than 2. Definitely not "11."

The question, even more simplified is: Do you agree or disagree with the opinion that the Bible and Truth From God only overlap in some areas, and aren't completely equal to each other?

I can see at least 11 explicitly-separable questions in your post:

1.  Is there divine inspiration in the Bible?
2.  Are only parts of the Bible divinely-inspired?
3.  Is the entirety of the Bible literally true?
4.  Is the history presented in the Bible literally true?
5.  Is the science presented in the Bible literally true?
6.  Is the moral teaching presented in the Bible literally true? (does moral teaching being "literally true" even make sense? )
7.  Can truth about God come from sources other than the Bible?
8.  Can truth about God come from other (Christian or non-Christian ) religious texts?
9.  Can truth about God come from improved science?
10.  Can truth about God come from personal intuition?
11.  Can truth about God come from other people?

[Blue3]

That's not what I'm asking.

But if you want to each of them point by point, you're free to.

[The Mikado]

Then you are probably missing my point, which I just addressed too. How can everything in the Bible be "true" if it says genocide and slavery are ok, but eating shellfish and wearing clothes of mixed fabric is not? Like, do you not see the disconnect there? Do you not see the point?

You're putting moral weight onto that. The laws are explicitly framed in Deuteronomy as a contract between God and the Israelites: do these things as I've said and you'll prosper in the land I've given you, don't do these things and you'll be scattered and suffer. Then the next arc is the Israelites regularly disobeying their rules and getting scattered and subjugated by first Assyria and then Babylon. The laws are a critical part of the story and you're putting a sort of moral weight on them when they're supposed to be viewed as the obligations of the Israelites as their part of the divine contract they've made to gain control of the land.

And none of those rules about fabrics or food or anything else have anything to do with Gentiles, they're explicitly the contract between God and Moses for laws governing the Israelites. The Biblical God does not care if non-Israelites eat pork or work on Saturday because they're not part of the covenant. The rules don't apply to Gentiles because they never entered into a covenant to gain a piece of land and a blessing in return for following the laws. Gentiles are only held to the much less stringent Noahide Laws that God gave to Noah, which notably have no restrictions on diet other than not consuming blood.

[The Mikado]

For more information, consult Deuteronomy 28.

In it, God, though Moses, lays out both the benefits to the Israelites of keeping the covenant:

9 The Lord will establish you as his holy people, as he has sworn to you, if you keep the commandments of the Lord your God and walk in his ways. 10 All the peoples of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of the Lord, and they shall be afraid of you. 11 The Lord will make you abound in prosperity, in the fruit of your womb, in the fruit of your livestock, and in the fruit of your ground in the land that the Lord swore to your ancestors to give you. 12 The Lord will open for you his rich storehouse, the heavens, to give the rain of your land in its season and to bless all your undertakings. You will lend to many nations, but you will not borrow. 13 The Lord will make you the head, and not the tail; you shall be only at the top, and not at the bottom—if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God, which I am commanding you today, by diligently observing them, 14 and if you do not turn aside from any of the words that I am commanding you today, either to the right or to the left, following other gods to serve them.

And the penalties for not obeying:

47 Because you did not serve the Lord your God joyfully and with gladness of heart for the abundance of everything, 48 therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you, in hunger and thirst, in nakedness and lack of everything. He will put an iron yoke on your neck until he has destroyed you. 49 The Lord will bring a nation from far away, from the end of the earth, to swoop down on you like an eagle, a nation whose language you do not understand, 50 a grim-faced nation showing no respect to the old or favor to the young. 51 It shall consume the fruit of your livestock and the fruit of your ground until you are destroyed, leaving you neither grain, wine, and oil, nor the increase of your cattle and the issue of your flock, until it has made you perish. 52 It shall besiege you in all your towns until your high and fortified walls, in which you trusted, come down throughout your land; it shall besiege you in all your towns throughout the land that the Lord your God has given you. 53 In the desperate straits to which the enemy siege reduces you, you will eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of your own sons and daughters whom the Lord your God has given you. 54 Even the most refined and gentle of men among you will begrudge food to his own brother, to the wife whom he embraces, and to the last of his remaining children, 55 giving to none of them any of the flesh of his children whom he is eating, because nothing else remains to him, in the desperate straits to which the enemy siege will reduce you in all your towns. 56 She who is the most refined and gentle among you, so gentle and refined that she does not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground, will begrudge food to the husband whom she embraces, to her own son, and to her own daughter, 57 begrudging even the afterbirth that comes out from between her thighs, and the children that she bears, because she is eating them in secret for lack of anything else, in the desperate straits to which the enemy siege will reduce you in your towns.

The whole chapter's worth reading, but that's a good taste. Deuteronomy 28 is basically the terms of all of the Leviticus and Numbers laws: if you, the Israelites, fill out these terms, you will be rewarded with land, power, and influence. If you reject them, you're going to be slaves again, in horrible, agonizing, humiliating fashion.

None of this is anything to do with the rules of Leviticus or Numbers as ethical laws, and most of them aren't. It's not supposed to be a code of good conduct or moral and righteous behavior, it's God's terms in a two way contract between God and Israel: fill this out and you will get the land in perpetuity, don't follow it and you'll lose the land and your freedom and be scattered amongst the nations as put-upon slaves forever. NONE of this establishes laws for non-Israelites, who are outside of the covenant in question and therefore don't have to follow the laws of Moses in order to be in God's favor because they aren't part of the contract.

It's intended as a set-up for the disobedience of even the best of the Kings, like Solomon, to the laws, and the Israelites eventual fate as the Kingdom of Israel is destroyed by Assyria and the Kingdom of Judah destroyed by Babylon.

[Blue3]

Then you are probably missing my point, which I just addressed too. How can everything in the Bible be "true" if it says genocide and slavery are ok, but eating shellfish and wearing clothes of mixed fabric is not? Like, do you not see the disconnect there? Do you not see the point?

You're putting moral weight onto that. The laws are explicitly framed in Deuteronomy as a contract between God and the Israelites: do these things as I've said and you'll prosper in the land I've given you, don't do these things and you'll be scattered and suffer. Then the next arc is the Israelites regularly disobeying their rules and getting scattered and subjugated by first Assyria and then Babylon. The laws are a critical part of the story and you're putting a sort of moral weight on them when they're supposed to be viewed as the obligations of the Israelites as their part of the divine contract they've made to gain control of the land.

And none of those rules about fabrics or food or anything else have anything to do with Gentiles, they're explicitly the contract between God and Moses for laws governing the Israelites. The Biblical God does not care if non-Israelites eat pork or work on Saturday because they're not part of the covenant. The rules don't apply to Gentiles because they never entered into a covenant to gain a piece of land and a blessing in return for following the laws. Gentiles are only held to the much less stringent Noahide Laws that God gave to Noah, which notably have no restrictions on diet other than not consuming blood.

I think it's wrong for Hebrews to obey those silly rules too, and I don't think God would have ever made a "contract" with them including those things.
Which brings me back to the original question on whether the Bible is always correct, all parts of it from God and nothing else... or not.

[ShadowRocket]

I basically subscribe to the language used in the Vatican II document Dei verbum.

If you hold the position that God dictated the Bible word for word then you do have a problem when it comes to any of the scientific and historical claims  that aren't accurate, not to mention the problematic language regarding genocide and slavery.

But if you acknowledge that the writers were using the literary and cultural customs of their time, then I think most of the those problems become moot.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

If "divinely inspired" means that the books, or parts of them, were directly or indirectly written by God, then I don't believe a single word of the Bible is "divinely inspired."

If "divinely inspired" means that the books of the Bible were written by flawed but searching people who were inspired by the belief in a certain kind of God, then I'd say the whole collection is "divinely inspired." 

I believe something in between these: they written by flawed but searching people in response to real encounters with God.

[°Leprechaun]

I think that a good place to start with a discussion of literalism in the Bible is at the beginning, the book of Genesis.

Also, how important is the Hebrew part of the Bible to most Christians. Do you have to take any of it literally to be a Christian?

[Statilius the Epicurean]

Also, how important is the Hebrew part of the Bible to most Christians. Do you have to take any of it literally to be a Christian?

The Hebrew Bible is (more or less) literally half of the Christian Testament so I would say yes, probably.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Also, how important is the Hebrew part of the Bible to most Christians. Do you have to take any of it literally to be a Christian?

The mere suggestion that this question is worthy of serious discussion is etc. etc. etc.

[Xeuma]

The idea the Bible presents a unified worldview is deeply flawed. We only need look at the two conflicting accounts of creation in the first two chapters to know that. That said, Scripture contains what God wished it to contain for the sake of our salvation through human hands. Fortunately for us, as the Catechism puts it:

Still, the Christian faith is not a "religion of the book." Christianity is the religion of the "Word" of God, a word which is "not a written and mute word, but the Word is incarnate and living". If the Scriptures are not to remain a dead letter, Christ, the eternal Word of the living God, must, through the Holy Spirit, "open [our] minds to understand the Scriptures."

Thus the fact I can't use the Bible as a history or science textbook is irrelevant.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

"Hebrew part of the Bible" is an expression that sounds dangerously likely to be followed by some stupid argument about homosexuality or shellfish.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

"Hebrew part of the Bible" is an expression that sounds dangerously likely to be followed by some stupid argument about homosexuality or shellfish.

Or (((Hebrew part of the Bible))). Or both.

[The Mikado]

Re: that point, I wouldn't want to speak for ultra-Orthodox Jews but the vast majority of Hasidic sects say pretty explicitly that the laws of Moses only apply to Jews...just like the vast majority of Christians believe they don't. (Excepting, like, Seventh Day Adventists on the Christian front.)

Judaism is not a universalizing religion and the laws of the Torah are the Israelites' contract with their God, not a commandment from God to all of humanity. This is pretty basic theology. Christians literally since St. Paul invented the religion argued that Christians who aren't Jewish (now all Christians) aren't part of that covenant and aren't subject to the laws of Moses. Jews tend to agree that their religious laws are theirs alone and not universal. It's super weird when people sneer at Christians all "ha ha you eat pork and aren't circumcised" when "you can eat pork and not be circumcised" has been Christian doctrine for 1950 years.

[Хahar 🤔]

Re: that point, I wouldn't want to speak for ultra-Orthodox Jews but the vast majority of Hasidic sects say pretty explicitly that the laws of Moses only apply to Jews...just like the vast majority of Christians believe they don't. (Excepting, like, Seventh Day Adventists on the Christian front.)

Judaism is not a universalizing religion and the laws of the Torah are the Israelites' contract with their God, not a commandment from God to all of humanity. This is pretty basic theology. Christians literally since St. Paul invented the religion argued that Christians who aren't Jewish (now all Christians) aren't part of that covenant and aren't subject to the laws of Moses. Jews tend to agree that their religious laws are theirs alone and not universal. It's super weird when people sneer at Christians all "ha ha you eat pork and aren't circumcised" when "you can eat pork and not be circumcised" has been Christian doctrine for 1950 years.

This is the central conflict of Acts of the Apostles, no less.

[Former President tack50]

Also, how important is the Hebrew part of the Bible to most Christians. Do you have to take any of it literally to be a Christian?

The Hebrew Bible is (more or less) literally half of the Christian Testament so I would say yes, probably.

I thought that the New Testament essencially "repealed and replaced" the Old Testament in terms of being the "guiding book for Christians"?

[Xeuma]

Also, how important is the Hebrew part of the Bible to most Christians. Do you have to take any of it literally to be a Christian?

The Hebrew Bible is (more or less) literally half of the Christian Testament so I would say yes, probably.

I thought that the New Testament essencially "repealed and replaced" the Old Testament in terms of being the "guiding book for Christians"?

That's not a very good way of looking at things; at best its a very simplified way of how Christians understand it. If that were to be the case, why include the Old Testament at all? Rather, we understand a connection between the Old and New Testaments by typologies--that is, the New Testament is hidden within its predecessor waiting for Christ to make it known. (As a friend of mine (mostly jokingly) put it, the New Testament is the exact same as the Old, but much less exciting). Indeed, the readings of each Mass are selected with a view to these typologies. For example, the readings in Sirach about Wisdom are often read on Marian feast days.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Also, how important is the Hebrew part of the Bible to most Christians. Do you have to take any of it literally to be a Christian?

The Hebrew Bible is (more or less) literally half of the Christian Testament so I would say yes, probably.

I thought that the New Testament essentially "repealed and replaced" the Old Testament in terms of being the "guiding book for Christians"?

Only if you are a Marcionist heretic.

Every mainstream sect and even most of the odd sects consider the Law to still be valid. What they differ about is how to obtain Grace and who can receive it.