Literalism

The word "literal" is used a lot in debates over Bible history or Bible prophecy. Sometimes it's used as a term of abuse. We need to draw some distinctions:

i) There's a difference between literalism and a literal interpretation. Literalism is a hermeneutical system. A literal interpretation is often the correct interpretation, but not because our methods dictate a literal interpretation. 

ii) Literalism is culturally relative. What's figurative to a modern reader might be literal to an ancient reader. What's literal to a modern reader might be figurative to an ancient reader. Take idiomatic figures of speech like "shooting the bull." Someone for whom English is a second language might take that literally! 

When readers interpret the Bible "literally," what that usually means is what strikes them as literal given their modern cultural frame of reference. What they grew up hearing, seeing, reading, the media, social expectations about what's possible or real. So the "literal" sense is unstable. A form of reader-response criticism. What it means to the reader, given his plausibility structure.

iii) In that respect, literalism is frequently the opposite of original intent. Traditionally, the grammatico-historical method is concerned with recovering or ascertaining what the text meant to the author and his target audience. 

iv) In addition, readers often bring auxiliary assumptions to the text of Scripture. We can see this in debates over the flood. Secular critics of the flood raise scientific objections to a global flood. They map the world of Genesis onto the modern world, then drawn invidious comparisons. But in so doing, they unconsciously interject auxiliary assumptions into the ancient text.

When global flood geologists devise model flood mechanisms (e.g. impact event, hydroplate theory, catastrophic plate tectonics, eccentric orbital mechanics), they may say that they are interpreting the text literally, but at the same time they are recasting the text in light of their auxiliary assumptions. 

Likewise, they criticize local flood geologists on scientific grounds, viz. the ark can't travel upstream, the Mesopotamian flood basin can't contain a massive deluge, prediluvian man migrated to the far corners of the earth due to human longevity and fecundity.

And, of course, local flood geologists return the favor by attacking global flood geology on scientific grounds–objections which typically mirror secular critics. Conversely, they defend their own view by appeal to auxiliary theories, viz. extant Mesopotamian typology, a storm surge.

All sides to this debate help themselves to extrabiblical auxiliary hypothesis. 

v) As a rule, when we interpret the Bible and attempt to correlate Biblical events with a real world setting, I think it's best to make the fewest auxiliary assumptions, although that has to be counterbalanced by the simplest explanation. 

vi) Apropos (v), there are often uncertainties when we interpret an ancient text. There are more often uncertainties when we try to reconstruct the distant past. And when we try to correlate an ancient text with the past, that combines the uncertainties. So it's prudent to have more than one interpretive working hypothesis. 

I'm not suggesting we should artificially hedge our bets for purely pragmatic reasons. I'm saying that if there are genuine uncertainties, then we should make allowance for that fact, and have more than one interpretive option, where there is more than one reasonable interpretation or historical reconstruction. 

Ancient prophecy raises analogous issues. The idiom of ancient prophecies is often enigmatic for modern readers. And just as the distance past is indirectly inaccessible, so is the future. That's why it can be tricky to correlate a prophecy with its fulfillment in advance of the fact. And the same holds true for ancient histories about ancient events. It's the same thing in reverse.