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From what I understand of it, the Bible is not to be interpreted, nor is the Old Testament to be summarily dismissed. The Bible is the word of an omnipotent God; When an all-powerful and all-knowing God says something, he means that shit. All of it.
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Not exactly. Some (most?) Protestant denominations work this way, but not the Catholics (Roman or Eastern), the various Orthodox sects, the Copts, or the Armenians. Most of the pre-Reformation sects of Christianity treat the Bible as a collection of numerous things: instructions, prophesies, history, military statistics and strategy, allegory, and social station-keeping tales like the stories of Ruth, Esther, and the Bros. Maccabees. Leaf through a Catholic or Coptic Bible sometime: most of the good ones are full of footnotes denoting when something is, for instance, allegorical (and should be treated as such) or instructive, and explaining why the difference is important in the given context. The idea of the total inerrancy of the Bible (and the follow-on doctrine known as Sola Scriptora) was a reaction to the power of the Papacy to make such definitions, and the power (or tendency) of individual clergy to use certain passages to make whatever point they felt like at the time. Biblical Inerrancy was not, and is not, taught in most pre-Reformation denominations. This is why the Catholic Churches, for instance, have had less trouble with theories like Heliocentrism or Evolution.