open source theology

I think PART of the answer is that - in feudal times - most people didn’t read the bible at ALL. Whatever it contained, most folks were wholly dependent on the educated clergy’s interpretations.

As to how the few educated folks read scripture, well… I’m curious about that myself.

I don’t think so. These are some quotes that are particularly pertinent to the creation/evolution issue:

‘The first chapters of Genesis, no doubt, give the story of creation in the form of a folk-tale - a fact recognised as early as St. Jerome…’C.S.Lewis, "Dogma and the Universe", God in the Dock, p.32    

These quotes are from Russell Stannard’s book, Doing Away with Gog? (Marshall Pickering, 1993)

‘What man of sense will suppose that the first and second and third day, and the evening and morning, existed without a Sun and Moon and stars?’Origen, 3rd century theologian, p.21

‘In the beginning were created only germs or causes of the forms of life which were afterwards to be developed in gradual course’. St. Augustine cited in Russell Stannard, Doing Away with God? p.22

Russell Stannard adds this comment:

‘The strictly literalistic approach to the Bible came into the ascendency only at the time of the Reformation in the 16th century. It was a time of great upheaval. The protestants were breaking free of the power of Rome. They put their trust in the Bible rather than in the Pope. Thse remaining loyal to the Pope naturally wanted to  reaffirm their own allegiance to the Bible. So, a situation developed in which the two rival factions sought to outdo each other in theor professed loyalty to the Bible.. That’s how the idea formed that one should not in any way question what the Bible says. And from that time onwards the literalistic interpretation of the Bible was handed down to the present time. Thus when believers today hold to a literalistic interpretation of Genesis, in the teeth of evidence for the Big Bang and for evolution, they are not ‘defending the Bible’  - as they believe themselves to be doing. Instead they are defending a fairly recent - spurious - interpretation placed on the writings.’ p.22

I think it’s important to note that there is a huge difference between reading something literally and reading it literarily. The former is a flat reading that misses genre and literary devices like metaphor, irony, symbolism etc. It’s a mistake to think that these devices are imposed on the text by 21st century intellectuals as if pre-moderns were too stupid or so uncreative that they lacked the sophistry needed for writing and reading in a nuanced and creative way. All the greatest stories in the world require attention from their readers in order to unearth the treasure that the story is. The attitude that says the meaning should be obvious is naive or uninformed or unadventurous or simply lazy. You can take your pick. Personally I have long felt that in schools and churches people must be taught how to read - not just the mechanics of it (‘a’ for apple etc) but the depth of it. Nobody assumes that they can write simply because they can put words on a page; likewise we shouldn’t assume we can read just because we get words off a page.