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Did you read the link from the poster OddTrader? The man is the biblical scholar. He question christian and atheist for how they interpret the bible. Very interesting. I think you will like that link.
From the link of OddTrader.
http://contradictionsinthebible.com/defend-biblical-text-getting-genesis-1-right/
"Thus defending these once independent texts, their individual authors, and their unique beliefs is quite different from defending what is implied and often understood in the label “the Holy Bible.” These are two completely separate and even opposing aims. The latter advocates an understanding and “reading” of these texts through the theological lens of later readers where that which is implied in the label “the Holy Book” becomes the dominant message of these texts, now conceived as a text in the singular, while the former advocates being honest to the biblical texts on the terms of their individual authors and the cultural contexts that produced them before these texts were appropriated by later readers to be “read” through later interpretive and theological frameworks (Genesis 1 and the Creationism Debate, xii)."
snip
Genesis 1 as a Test Case: Defending the Views and Beliefs of its Author
Let’s put this “defending the text, its author, and his beliefs” into practice and see, here visually, the results that this methodology produces. After approximately 25 pages of textual and cultural analysis of Genesis 1:1-10, with the sole aim of being honest to this text, its author, and his beliefs, this is what defending the text looks like visually. I reproduce pages 27-28 of my
Genesis 1 and the Creationism Debate.
Thus, far from presenting God creating Earth, a spherical planet orbiting a sun in one of many galaxies in infinite space (none of whose ideas existed to the author of this text), the text of Genesis 1 presents its god forming the substance earth, that is per our text dry, habitable, flat land which now rests on the waters below, and encasing it within a finite area of space, itself enclosed and defined by a solid domed expanse called the sky, which further functioned to hold back the primordial waters above it. In short, what the god of Genesis 1 creates is this:
not this:
In other words, our author’s presentation and imagination of how God created the material stuff of his world were shaped by his own subjective and culturally defined perceptions and beliefs about his world. These beliefs were deduced from what ancient man (mis)perceived on an empirical level: for example, rain fell from water which existed above the sky; whereas natural springs, deltas, and flooding led to the belief that the earth “floated” on and was supported by waters that existed below the earth, that is, below the dry ground beneath one’s feet. These beliefs, which for all intents and purposes functioned as “truths” for our author and his culture, were then legitimated by presenting the creator deity creating the world
as the author himself perceived it to be! In the end, what the god of Genesis 1:1-10 creates miraculously conforms to ancient Near Eastern man’s perceptions and beliefs about the world, and not what we today know the world, and the larger cosmos, to be.
Thus any Creationist professing belief in the creation account of Genesis 1 is just being negligent about what this text actual says and does not say, as well as being disingenuous toward the text and the beliefs of its author. This again exemplifies the problem at hand as well as our modern educational malaise concerning the literature of the Bible. No so-called Creationist believes the creation account in Genesis 1, but rather feigns belief out of ignorance about the text and the beliefs, messages, and worldview expressed therein. . . I find this whole interpretive enterprise intellectually
and spiritually damaging and dishonest, not to mention negligent of these ancient texts themselves and the beliefs and messages of their authors.
