Thom Stark in an interview about polytheism in the Old Testament. I like his articulation of the idea that ultimate meanings, not material details, are what we build our faith upon.
Truthful God-talk is poetry, not science—evocative, not descriptive. “Faith” is what we have when we live our lives as if they were meaningful…
He says this in the context of finding polytheism in the old-old-testament that is then reinterpreted to monotheism in the newer-old-testament. To put the quote in proper context I’ll provide the rest of it here.
…and Christianity offers us one language that helps us do that. Like any language, of course, there are different dialects, accents, and vocabularies. Just as with English speakers, some Christians get irony, metaphor, and humor, and others don’t. Moreover, just as languages evolve to adapt to new realities and new knowledge, religions do the same, and rightly so, whether practitioners acknowledge it or not.