As an Eastern Orthodox Christian, I oftentimes experience many atheist and irreligious folks criticizing the Bible due to immoral stories of violence and barbarism, and whenever anyone offers any view that is not strictly literal, it is always dismissed as a modern liberal innovation to "explain-it-away." But, in reality, it is actually the other way around. Strict literalism is actually a modern Protestant innovation that didn't exist until after the Reformation. But in the Eastern Orthodox tradition--what I belong to, because it's the oldest Church--we rely on the guidance of the Patristics to interpret the Bible, and many of the patristic authors interpreted it in an allegorical way, especially the tales of violence. Origen of Alexandria--along with several of the Saints and Church Fathers from the Alexandrian and Ethiopian Orthodox traditions--applied allegorical interpretation to the Old Testament. The belief is essentially that the ultimate purpose of the Old Testament was to prophetically point to Christ and/or teach a lesson related to Him. The stories are history combined with prophetic and allegorical myth to teach a particular lesson, told in the mindframe of the authors at the time. Origen of Alexandria is perhaps the greatest allegorical interpretor of the Bible in the Orthodox Church and one of the most renowned. One example of his model of interpretation would be that of the infamous Psalm that horrifies many people. That one Psalm which blesses the Jews for bashing in the heads of the Babylonian infants against rocks. It is an allegorical tale which ultimately means for us to resist ALL of our vices; no matter how small they are, before they become something worse. The Babylonian part represents evilness/vice/sin, the infants part represents sinfulness even in its smallest point, the rock represents Christ, and killing the Babylonian infants by bashing them against the rock means to eliminate our vices and sins through Christ, no matter how small they may appear. The ONLY portions of the Bible that have to be read literally are the Gospels and the book of Acts, everything else is pretty much history (exaggerated and told through the perspective of an ancient, barbaric people) combined with myth and prophecy to reveal a deeper message that we can now understand in the light of Christ. [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ka-4898NN2U]Fr. Jacobses[/url] briefly outlines the Orthodox view of the Old Testament, how we don't necessarily assert that all of it is 100% literal and that the ultimate purpose is to reveal truths about Christ.