To Christians: I'm trying to understand why the Old Testament is just stories that are clearly not true and the New Testament is meant to be factual truth.

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The Bible says in the latter times many will fall away from the faith, but even more will fall victim to the world's thinking. The Christians you meet do not read their bibles, and have little faith in God's people to preserve a true historical record, and if you did your own investigation, you would see that the Old Testament account is verified in history, in the records we have of other nations, and in archaeology. For example, the "figurative" story of Sodom and Gommorah. As figurative as they were, it seems Ron Wyatt's archaeology team have found them, including proof that they were destroyed by fireballs from heaven.

How did Cain and Abel have kids? well if a christian can't answer that, they should maybe stop reading the children's bible with pictures that tell them it was a nice story for children, and read genesis 5. I'm dumbfounded, genuinely.

In the day that God created man, He made him in the likeness of God. He created them male and female, and blessed them and called them Mankind in the day they were created. And Adam lived one hundred and thirty years, and begot a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth. After he begot Seth, the days of Adam were eight hundred years; and he had sons and daughters.

Any questions on any of the stranger parts of the old testament? I'm surprised about you said about David'd Kingdom, most serious historians are willing to admit that the OT account of David'd reign is very accurate historically though they might question the veracity of him speaking with God. Can you direct me to some refutations of David's reign, as it is one I know to be generally accepted.

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I've had people don't think that those things were really real.

What, 6-day creation and Noah's ark? I agree, and I think that most people you would have a reasonable discussion with would too. And obviously there are other stories like that. Other than that, what were you referring to? Because I don't think I really listed anything specific. And there are some things even historians aren't sure about. I guess all I'm saying is we aren't saying certain things didn't literally happen because we don't want to take a tough position and say that a supernatural thing happened. We do that plenty of other times. We're saying it didn't literally happen because that's not what an intelligent reading of the text would suggest.

I'm trying to fathom why you would clearly plan to write a book, release it in two very distinct sections and two very differing styles

Well that's the thing. The Biblical writers didn't plan that their works would be part of a compilation like the Bible. It's like compiling an anthology short stories written by authors from Ancient Greece to the modern day and then wondering why it takes different approaches for each. And the point isn't that things are 'fake.' Not a literal historical account does not mean fake any more than using figurative language is 'fake.' It's more like "how do we gain a good understanding when the meaning is not straightforward." And the answer is understanding the historical context and textual characteristics. This is usually the work of scholars.

Maybe I'm wrong, I just think from a consistency point of view it's shabby craftsmanship.

But it's not like the writers of the Bible were building something together or something. It's an anthology, not a novel.

If you read the Bible's OT and NT carefully, you'll find that they are not inconsistent but compatable. the OT looks towards Jesus's coming, and the NT testment if also focased on Jesus's life here, and his 2nd coming. I personally think "cherry picking" is quite degrading and it makes christianity more ordinary

What do you base that on? So your subjective sense of what is supposed to be not taken literally is good enough? Also, for example If the Adam and Eve story isn't true why would Jesus die for the sin absolve us from the original sin? If you ignore all the nonsense (which is most all of the book) then you're left with nothing.

How do you deem what is a metaphor and what is to be taken literally?

I've heard that the extreme ages of early patriarchs was representative of their holiness rather than a physical age. Therefore they were specific because this to them represented a sort of "power level" where they could compare their legendary ancestors to one another.

Because a lot of the NT references the OT.

If you removed the OT from the Bible, it'd be like having broken hyperlinks all over the place in Wikipedia.

NT isn't any better, really. It is extremely unreliable, and some of the most important teachings of modern Christianity are translation/transcription errors.

If you are interested in more of this, here is an excellent video on the subject by an actual Biblical scholar.

Well that then depends on the truth in question: factual truth versus symbolic truth. Now, it being allegory, I'm claiming that no, the stories contained therein are not factual. Some may be historical in nature, like those chronicling David's conquests, or the Exodus, or the biography of Jesus, but having been written down after a long period of oral tradition any facts have been skewed in an ancient game of telephone. For example, the horn that blew down the walls of Jericho may have just been a signal for infiltrators who weakened the wall just enough for it to fall. But that does not mean that these stories do not have meaning. They are meant to be values held by the reader, the nature of humanity, the nature of good and evil, etc etc. I mean look at Genesis- the first two verses describe two different accounts of the same event. Both are true symbolically, while obviously, as evidence suggests, neither are true factually.