The Bible was never meant to be taken as a literal account of ancient history. Its creators were almost never biblical characters themselves, but usually included many authors writing over a span of centuries.

Current archaeology does not confirm Biblical events. Rather, it shows many of them to be largely fictitious, invented by later authors to illustrate moral arguments. Morality and salvation are the areas the Bible covers after all, not science and history.

Many Christians will allow modern science to influence their interpretation of events described in the Bible. Others, however, will never stoop so low as to deny the absolute historicity of a religious text probably dating no earlier than the eighth century B.C. A garden with every species known to science is apparently possible in their minds, as is a worldwide flood that deposited all fossils ever discovered and created a myriad of other formations.

The grand Exodus narrative is also taken literally, ignoring the sparse evidence for a slave migration two million strong. Also short on evidence is the conquest of Canaan. The city of Ai was empty after the third millennium B.C. while Jericho was barely populated. In any case, almost all Canaanite cities, even the largest, lacked defensive walls during the suggested dates for the sieges. The discrepancy between archaeology and the Bible is obvious.

To be sure, literalists will attempt to explain that discrepancy, but their explanations are weak. They are built on the assumption that to have any truth, the Bible must describe physical reality and that all Christians would do well to take this as fact.

Must Christians restrict so thoroughly their interpretations of the Bible? When George McReady Price formulated the idea of “flood geology”, he did not look at the evidence by itself. He interpreted the geologic evidence of the flood through a literal reading of the story of Noah’s Ark – a very laughable attempt to attain scientific credibility.

Similarly, I have met many Christians in my life who misunderstand biological evolution and all take a fundamentalist view on the Bible. They poke fun at evolutionary biologists for supposedly believing that humans are descended from “monkeys.” They apparently forget that Biblical literalists believe humanity was formed from soil.

That hypocrisy results from dismissing all that is contrary to their dogma as heretical. Therefore, literalist Christians cannot learn from their opposition. Most are sure that they are right and take pride in their certainty. That pride is misguided. Their certainty quickly turns to blindness.