The Line of Literalism

Food for thought....

So you're a good Modern Orthodox Jew. You've read Rabbi Slifkin and other relatively progressive Orthodox books and you know that a 6 day creation and a world wide deluge is some sort of allegory - not to be taken literally - and definitely not a contradiction to science - because Genesis is not teaching us science. Period.

So you read through Bereishit you sail through Noach - all the time laughing at those dumb Charedim who are so backward and intransigent - unable to resolve the paltry difficulties of reading Genesis with scientific knowledge. Eventually you get to parshat Lech Lecha. Wait a sec? Is this also an allegory? After all Avraham is connected to Noach and even to Adam HaRishon genealogically. At no point is there a red flag that says "oy! time to start taking things literally again, we've left metaphor land and are on to the real historical, national narrative!" No break in the narrative at all.Is Avraham an allegory? Is Yitzchak not science or history but a "spiritual message"? What if we go a little further? Ma'amad Har Sinai! Is that not to be taken literally? The people who stood at Har Sinai are also genealogically linked to characters in "metaphorical narratives"....

True there isn't the same type of scientific evidence against the Avot and Exodus as there is against a literal Genesis but nevertheless one has to ask - when does the Torah leave the world of allegories and "spiritual truths" and enter the world of real historical facts? Where is the line dividing literalism from symbolism and Monotheistic "mashology"? Why is this line so invisible? An untrained eye reading Genesis will miss the line completely. And how do family trees seem to move so easily from the one side of the line to the other without the slightest break or interruption....