Bible Literalism

Interesting post at Volokh referencing a recent poll on religion.

(See related discussion on Crooked Timber here)

Part of the poll concerned the 'literalness' of select Bible stories--whether they can be accepted literally word-for-word, or more figurative in nature. Here are the numbers:

Noah and the Ark (the rain, animals in twos and sevens, flooding of the whole earth...)
Literal: 60%
Figurative: 33%
No Opinion: 7%

Creation of the Earth in six days
Literal: 61%
Figurative: 30%
No Opinion: 8%

Moses's Parting of the Red Sea
Literal: 64%
Figurative: 28%
No Opinion: 8%

What I find interesting about the numbers is how close together they are for all categories. It's impossible to tell from the poll data, but I'd be willing to bet the closeness is because virtually all of the polled people gave exactly the same answer for all three questions. In other words, people either believe the stories in the Bible to be ALL literally true, word-for-word, or ALL figurative: very few people seem to believe some Bible stories are more literal than others--it's all or nothing.

That's an interesting opinion given the disparate sources of Bible scripture. Does it have to be all or nothing? Isn't it possible that some of the accounts of God's dealings with early man were accurate but others were only semi-accurate simplifications or somewhat altered re-tellings of actual events?

Example: my mission president, an archaelogist, believes personally that the story of Noah and the flood isn't quite a literal representation of facts. He believes there was certainly an ancient prophet named Noah who built an ark and gathered animals, but that Noah's flood didn't cover the 'whole earth'--just Noah's section of it, or what Noah and his family thought at the time was the whole Earth.

This is a reasonable idea which I could accept, although of course I realize (and have argued before) that reason is not a good way of judging the accuracy of scripture, given the abilities of God. Still, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that some of the details of the Noah's Ark story in particular aren't quite accurate, while on the other hand, I have no problem accepting the story of the parting of the Red Sea as literally true. (I also wouldn't be surprised to find out it was exactly the opposite...) I don't see why all Bible (and Book of Mormon stories) have to be accepted as ALL literally true, or ALL complete fanciful myths when it very likely could be a mix of both--even within one particular story. The key is not making final judgments based on incomplete evidence. What I or my mission president think about Bible story X are obviously just guesses--and it's entirely possible that any or all of my ideas about scripture stories will turn out to be wrong...or at least incomplete. So be it--that's part of the learning process. But the truthfulness of any one Bible story won't change the fact that it's the key to learning about the gospel of Jesus Christ which is it's primary purpose. I'll accept it as such first and foremost and let the additional details and/or corrections of the various Bible stories come to my knowledge in due time...