&gt; Modern Christians and Jews often fall back on the excuse of interpreting their books as metaphors as opposed to the literal word of god. It&#x27;s a great cop out.<p>While Christians have usually viewed some parts of the Bible literally (though not the same parts for different Christians in different times and places), the idea that the Bible is <i>entirely</i> to be understood literally (and the related idea that the Bible is the entire basis for Christianity) is a relatively <i>new</i> doctrine, belonging to a small (globally, though more prominent numerically and, even moreso, politically, in the US) subset of Christianity. (As the Bible directly contradicts itself on basic things like sequences of events in several places -- even within the first couple chapters of Genesis -- its also an internally inconsistent view, so its hard to see the alternative as a cop-out, since its the only possible internally-consistent approach.)