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

[The Mikado]

Saying that the Bible is completely fiction is a really, really bad take that'll lead you into denialism of things like Assyrian mentions of King Hezekiah or Greek accounts of Cyrus the Great that more or less correspond to how he's described in Ezra/Nehemiah or that there's a real imprint of some of the Babylonian wars described in II Kings or Jeremiah (Babylon defeating the Egyptians, for example). People who deny the Bible completely end up having to defend the indefensible on a lot of things in I Kings and II Kings or Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel about contemporary geopolitics where what little fossil record and accounts from other kingdoms in the region more or less bears out the Biblical narrative. God's existence or nonexistence is totally irrelevant to the point that the narrative of I Kings and II Kings about 9th-6th century BCE Near Eastern politics seems more or less on point, albeit biased in its focus and trying to serve a certain political point.

I think there's a really unfortunate tendency to bat away the entire Old Testament rather than treating it like one specific tribe's account of Near Eastern politics, culture, and warfare in the first half of the first millennium BCE with all of the ups and downs re: credibility that that entails. Instead of "It's a biased source, but it's the only account that survived in full and most of the archeological records we have more or less back it up in outline," there's a smug component that just wants to toss the entire book out as having little of value to the modern world, which is demonstrably false. Ezekiel's description of the wealth and importance of Tyre is A. echoed by Greek sources and B. far more poetic and beautiful, and his description of Tyre's fall to the Babylonians? Ezekiel 26 is captures a trading city, rich and powerful, falling to the Babylonians at the height of its influence, something we demonstrably know happened at that time, and yet there are people who think that the OT should be just tossed out?

In the eleventh month of the twelfth year, on the first day of the month, the word of the Lord came to me: 2 “Son of man, because Tyre has said of Jerusalem, ‘Aha! The gate to the nations is broken, and its doors have swung open to me; now that she lies in ruins I will prosper,’ 3 therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I am against you, Tyre, and I will bring many nations against you, like the sea casting up its waves. 4 They will destroy the walls of Tyre and pull down her towers; I will scrape away her rubble and make her a bare rock. 5 Out in the sea she will become a place to spread fishnets, for I have spoken, declares the Sovereign Lord. She will become plunder for the nations, 6 and her settlements on the mainland will be ravaged by the sword. Then they will know that I am the Lord.

7 “For this is what the Sovereign Lord says: From the north I am going to bring against Tyre Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, king of kings, with horses and chariots, with horsemen and a great army. 8 He will ravage your settlements on the mainland with the sword; he will set up siege works against you, build a ramp up to your walls and raise his shields against you. 9 He will direct the blows of his battering rams against your walls and demolish your towers with his weapons. 10 His horses will be so many that they will cover you with dust. Your walls will tremble at the noise of the warhorses, wagons and chariots when he enters your gates as men enter a city whose walls have been broken through. 11 The hooves of his horses will trample all your streets; he will kill your people with the sword, and your strong pillars will fall to the ground. 12 They will plunder your wealth and loot your merchandise; they will break down your walls and demolish your fine houses and throw your stones, timber and rubble into the sea. 13 I will put an end to your noisy songs, and the music of your harps will be heard no more. 14 I will make you a bare rock, and you will become a place to spread fishnets. You will never be rebuilt, for I the Lord have spoken, declares the Sovereign Lord.

15 “This is what the Sovereign Lord says to Tyre: Will not the coastlands tremble at the sound of your fall, when the wounded groan and the slaughter takes place in you? 16 Then all the princes of the coast will step down from their thrones and lay aside their robes and take off their embroidered garments. Clothed with terror, they will sit on the ground, trembling every moment, appalled at you. 17 Then they will take up a lament concerning you and say to you:

“‘How you are destroyed, city of renown,
    peopled by men of the sea!
You were a power on the seas,
    you and your citizens;
you put your terror
    on all who lived there.
18 Now the coastlands tremble
    on the day of your fall;
the islands in the sea
    are terrified at your collapse.’

19 “This is what the Sovereign Lord says: When I make you a desolate city, like cities no longer inhabited, and when I bring the ocean depths over you and its vast waters cover you, 20 then I will bring you down with those who go down to the pit, to the people of long ago. I will make you dwell in the earth below, as in ancient ruins, with those who go down to the pit, and you will not return or take your place in the land of the living. 21 I will bring you to a horrible end and you will be no more. You will be sought, but you will never again be found, declares the Sovereign Lord.”

Nahum's vivid description of Nineveh after its sack is excellent as well, for yet another event we know happened. Nahum really gets across the sheer hatred the subject peoples of the region had for the Assyrians and how absolutely no one is going to mourn Nineveh's fall because of the Assyrians' brutality.

Whenever people talk about the historicity of the Bible, they focus on myths like the Garden of Eden or the Flood or the Tower of Babel and then use that to discredit the really important historical information in the Bible and it's something I feel is really, really important to push back against.

[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.

[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.