The Truth of Metaphor

As I use the word, "metaphor" is a large umbrella category.  It has both a negative and positive meaning.  Negatively, it means nonliteral.  Positively, it means the more-than-literal meaning of language. Thus metaphorical meaning is not inferior to literal meaning, but is more than literal meaning.

I have been told that the German novelist Thomas Mann defined a myth as "a story about the way things never were, but always are." So, is a myth true?  Literally true, no.  Really true, yes.

A Catholic priest once said in a sermon, "The Bible is true, and some of it happened."

I say to my students, "Believe whatever you want about whether it happened this way; now let's talk about what the story means."  The statement applies to the Genesis stories of creation, the gospel birth stories of the Bible generally: a preoccupation with factuality can obscure the metaphorical meanings and the truth of the stories as metaphor.

The Bible as metaphor is a way of seeing the whole: a way of seeing God, ourselves, the divine-human relationship, and the divine-world relationship.  And the point is not to "believe" in a metaphor--but to "see" with it.  Thus the point is not to believe in the Bible--but to see our lives with God through it.

Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity, pg. 49-54

Although most likely influenced by the famous Epic of Gilgamesh, adopting such themes as the presence of a snake, a plant that grants a type of immortality, a focus upon human death and morality, and ht use of sexuality to siginify a type of rite of passage that transforms people from being animal-like into human beings, J has its own unique story to tell. Like the author of the Epic of Gilgamesh, J observed that human sexual behavior is different than the types of activities in which animals engage.  For J, humans possessed an advanced knowledge of sex unlike the animals, but very much like the gods.

-David Bokovoy, Authoring the Old Testament: Genesis - Deutoronomy, pg. 107

When reading the Garden story contextually, the "knowledge" that the fruit imparted in J's story, making the primordial couple "like gods," appears specifically linked with sexual awareness.  As the myth opens up, the man already possesses the basic attributes of knowledge and discernment.  Prior to eating the fruit, the man holds enough knowledge to recognize and name the animals Yahweh creates, and the man shows enough discernment to recognize that the woman proves fit for the role of a "helper."  Therefore, the knowledge that the primordial couple obtains in J's myth is not simply intelligence, for the man already possesses this attribute prior to  consuming the forbidden fruit.  The knowledge the couple gains is sexual awareness.

-David Bokovoy, Authoring the Old Testament: Genesis - Deutoronomy, pg. 105