Biblical literalism

Biblical literalism reads biblical texts as straightforward factual accounts unless literary or historical context indicates otherwise. It treats genre and context, rather than automatic figurative interpretation, as guides to meaning.

Historical-grammatical method: A method of biblical interpretation that seeks meaning through a text’s language, historical setting, and literary context. It supplies interpretive tools often used to justify literal readings while accounting for context.
Biblical fundamentalism: A Protestant movement defending core doctrines and the authority of the Bible against modernist theology. Fundamentalism often embraces literal readings, but it is a broader religious movement.
Higher criticism: Historical and literary analysis that investigates the sources, composition, and transmission of biblical texts. Its findings challenged traditional assumptions about biblical authorship and historical unity.
Creationism: The belief that the universe or living things originated through divine creation rather than solely through natural processes. Literal readings of Genesis inform some creationist accounts of origins.
Benjamin B. Warfield: A Princeton theologian who defended biblical inspiration and inerrancy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His account of inspiration influenced conservative Protestant approaches to Scripture’s factual authority.
Biblical hermeneutics: The study and practice of interpreting biblical texts. Literalism is one approach within the broader practice of biblical interpretation.
Biblical minimalism: A scholarly approach that questions how much the Hebrew Bible can establish about ancient Israel’s history. It contrasts with literalist confidence in biblical narratives as historical evidence.
The Fundamentals: A series of essays published from 1910 to 1915 defending conservative Protestant beliefs. The essays helped define the early twentieth-century movement associated with biblical inerrancy.
Biblical archaeology: The study of archaeological evidence in relation to the places, peoples, and events described in the Bible. Archaeological findings are often used to assess historical claims made in literal readings.
John Nelson Darby: A nineteenth-century Anglo-Irish preacher whose dispensational theology influenced evangelical interpretation of biblical prophecy. His system encouraged detailed readings of prophecy as referring to future historical events.

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