re: #213 Plato

How can learning the Oral Law coexist with literalism + knowledge of the material world? I will grant you that among the pious, there are great efforts to maintain certain pretenses. But in any practical sense, does literalism serve anything but social and political purposes?

Perhaps I was too simplistic in my previous statement about literalism. My point is that in the last 2000 years, the literal interpretation has always run a distinct second to something else. Either the Oral Law, or in a much later period, various mystical doctrines.