I Take the Bible Literally! - 19 & 20
Writers Use Language in Different Ways.
My point is that rules of interpretation involve a respect for grammar and usage. This seems very clear to any reader when interpreting a love letter written by a lovestruck youth, but people get goofy once they crack open the Bible to interpret it.
A Christian exclaims, “I take the Bible literally!” And that sounds noble on the surface, but then the person interprets “the stars” as literally going to “fall from heaven,” (Matthew 24:29) and that “all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized...” meant that every individual without exception – each man, woman and infant child – were presenting themselves to be baptized by John. (Mark 1:5)
I suggest that proper interpretation would read the latter instance as intentional exaggeration – hyperbole. Did every Tom, Dick and Harry really go out to the Jordan River? Or rather did it seem like almost everybody was there? Hyperbole makes sense. It would be similar to the newspaper reporting, “Everybody in the City of Milwaukee watched the Brewers in the ‘82 World Series!” It is a true report, but it is hardly literal.
As for the stars falling from heaven, I believe this is properly read and interpreted as the use of symbolism and, with perhaps, a mix of apocalyptic language.
In regard to symbolism, the reader would believe that Jesus was thinking of Joseph, son of Jacob, who had a dream in which twelve stars represented he and his brothers, and the sun and the moon represented his parents. So as Jesus describes the sun and moon being darkened and the stars falling from heaven, he is speaking symbolically of the destruction of Israel (the descendants of Joseph, his eleven brothers, and Jacob and Rachel).
Apocalyptic language is a form of symbolism. It is a genre attributed to certain Jewish post-Exile writers. Apocalyptic language mobilizes words as symbols to carry meaning, such as beast(s), the sea, horns, stars, censors, seals, trumpets, etc. The meaning of such words or symbols is usually tied to God’s supernaturally dramatic judgment carried out between heaven and earth. Literature that purports to be apocalyptic ranges from the canonical books of Daniel 7-12, the entire book of Zechariah, (maybe some Isaiah, and Joel) Matthew 24-25 and Revelation.