[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by Five-hole

Bear with me. You obviously are more immersed in the subject than I but I'll try to present my case.

I have read that certain sects of Judaism believe in a non-literal interpretation of the Bible (OT) through Qabbalah; in that, it was a secret doctrine or book passed from God to the holy priests, and it was "encoded" -- in much the same way the tetragrammaton is "encoded" -- through gematria and other numerological systems to preserve it's "truth".

Correct.

Originally Posted by Five-hole

Now, that's not really where I'm going (I don't care for numerology), but since I read that it really germinated the idea in my head that the Bible was non-literal: that is, meant to be "interpreted", such as is done through priests in the Catholic faith. Like parables, you know? It makes far more sense to me to suggest that many of the events in the Bible are not unlike our modern mythologies.

Well...Sort of.
the authors who originally told and then wrote down the traditions which became scripture almost certainly believed in their veracity. But the handling of the traditions almost certainly changed in time, as part of the interpretive process. I believe that prior to the destruction of Herod's temple, the sacred narratives, prophecies, litugies and wisdom traditions were constantly being re-worked through a process of adaptation and contemporization. It was not until after the Temple—and the institutional foundation of ancient Judaism—was destroyed that the idea of unalterable, "sacred" writings was really cemented for Jews and Christians.

Originally Posted by Five-hole

A quick example here. Spiderman is not real, but he represents much of the way modern North-Americans think. It is romantic to think that, because life is so "ordinary" for many people, something truly exceptional can happen to an individual so that they can make a real difference on the world. Now imagine that there was some massive breakdown of modern society, and only some information was recovered say two hundred years in the future. It's not so hard to believe that those recovering the information would think Spiderman was actually a real entity, is it? Similarly, it's not so hard to believe that two thousand years ago, stories and second-hand accounts of the life of Jesus were re-interpreted, exaggerated, and changed. Or that a particularly bad storm became a huge storm, then an epic storm, and then that God flooded the entire earth. Even given the different dates at which the different books of the New Testament were written, there are some discrepancies. When one book (I forget which) is written in like 130AD and the rest much earlier, and given the non-ideal record keeping systems of the time, human fallibilities play a significant role.

I have actually used similar examples to your Spiderman one in classes that I have taught in the past. There is no question that the biblical texts (all of them!) have undergone extensive revision subject to poliical, sociological and theological forces. Because of this, most are skeptical about their historicity. I share some of the skepticism, but because of the paucity of sources in hand to accuratley reconstruct early Church history, or ancient Israelite history, we are dependant upon the biblical accounts to provide us insight into the periods in which they were written, and the evnts which they purport to have recorded. In many instances, while the manuscript copies are far removed from the actual "autographs" there are internal clues to a composition's age such as grammar and spelling, political outlook, and cultural descriptions. IN the cases of most of the NT books, we can be certain that they largely originated in the mid-to-late first century C.E. Because of so many of these internal consistencies, SOME validity must be afforded to the historical accuracy of the synoptic gospels in particular, and at least half of the Pauline epistles.

Originally Posted by Five-hole

A certain amount of leniency must be afforded those who wrote the Bible as their experiences would be extremely colored by the way human beings thought in that part of the world at that time. What may be an easily explainable meteorological phenomenon now may seem like God raining fire from the Heavens. What might have been just a powerful storm or tsunami might appear to be God flooding the world. When every event is colored by the presence of the divine, one has to expect that the same event would look massively different to a North American in 2006 AD than a Mesopotamian two thousand years ago.

So...yeah, that's my case for why I don't believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible. A little bit disjointed, but it's 12:30 AM.

I absolutely agree for the most part. Although I do appreciate much from the Bible as accurate representation of history (the accounts of the raids of Senechrib and the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem have proven to be very accurate; as well as the descriptions of Herod's reign, Roman occupation and the Temple establishment in the Gospels and Paul). I prefer the distinction "non-literal application" to "non-literal interpretation".