ChickenSoup
Banned
Come on C$ that is ridicules. Paul uses metaphors to explain the church (i.e. the body). You don't go around assuming that you are really an arm or a leg you understand what he is trying to do. Further, you don't simply go ok everything he has written is a metaphor because that bit was.
My simple point is this: We understand how to read things, what they are trying to do, and what should be taken literally or not, in everyday readings by looking at the context:
1. If we read Dear ... we know that what will follow is a letter
2. Strange layout of text = poetry.
This is what I was trying to get at not that Genesis is a love letter, it is not.
How do we tell what is a metaphor or not? Simply put (but difficult to do)we need to get as much information as possible. I.e. we know the story of Jesus is not a metaphor because the writers of the gospel tell us that is not what the book are meant to do (i.e. Luke says right up front that he is writing a history)
We do not see a dear, and the layout of the text is chronological. Methinks it was not a metaphor, especially since nowhere was it hinted to be a metaphor.