Me too! Feel free to laugh. Such assertions get us nowhere.
I just read something yesterday about how claims like that are useless. If I can find it again, I’ll post it.
Actually you believe your own concepts about the bible .
Example you just wrote earlier about what you call literal verses notional . You are already trying to reason
away the simple things by rationalizing it in your own mind .
As for me . JESUS simply said BEFORE ABRAHAM was I AM.
People often do as you do . Specially if they have been taught of men who had such reasoninings .
Men will always try and find a way around something literal , IF what is said opposes what they believe already to be true .
In other words men often read the bible through a lens of what THEY believed to be true .
And they see the scrips in a way that will back up their own ideals of what they thought the truth was .
Instead of just reading the bible and letting the TRUTH form in them
they go into it with a mind that has determined in part already what truth is .
They then read it in a way that agrees to , conforms to their own ideas . You aint alone either .
I would say in part MOST FOLKS do just that .
As for me , i read it and beleived it as a child and it all comes together more and more in time .
Too many folks went into the bible under pre concieved teachings and ideas of men or ideas they themselves had .
As i stated earlier .