Here's a helpful reminder from V. Philips Long about appropriate and inappropriate tolerance:

Are all worldviews equally valid? In many modern societies there is an insistence that individuals have the right to believe what they will. But this affirmation need not, and should not, slide into the kind of relativism or subjectivism that would insist that every individual's beliefs are right. Put another way, the right to believe and the rightness of belief are separate issues, the former by no means guaranteeing the latter.

Common sense would tell us that if in using the phrase model of reality we mean Reality in an ultimate sense, then by definition there can be only one completely valid worldview. Only one view of the world can be in every respect true to the way things are. To be sure, no fallible human being can claim fully to have grasped this "perfect worldview." But it is still fair to say that some worldviews are better, more promising, more likely to be true than others.

So, here's a cultural difference. In my experience, in the UK it's not uncommon for churches to have occasional sketches or dramas for or by 'the young people'. These are often poorly scripted, poorly costumed and poorly acted. The congregation sit politely through them, knowing that at best, it'll be over in two minutes and at worst,it'll take half an hour.

In America, what seems to have happened is that someone watched one such drama and thought, 'I know, that would make a great TV series.' And so Bibleman was born. The info describes it thus:

A religious superhero takes on evil villains and helps kids overcome moral dilemmas

How could you not want to watch that?

The scene opens with 5 carefully chosen kids (one fat one with glasses, one black one, one cute one etc.) sitting around in church doing their homework. The cute one with blond hair starts singing and suddenly we're in the middle of a musical routine. One of the kids pushes the fat one over. Then one of them starts gossiping. But what he doesn't know is that two evil janitors are eavesdropping and will take his words back to the Gossip Queen. Who looks like a man in drag wearing a leopardskin outfit and very frightening makeup.

But fear not! Bibleman is here! Wearing purple skintight lycra (sadly without his underpants on the outside) and a cape, he starts quoting from Romans.

Back to the kids who are learning a valuable lesson: that Eph 4:29 says 'Let no unwholesome talk come out of your mouths.' And with that, back to Bibleman who is defeating Gossip Queen by quoting large passages from Eph 6 and wielding a plastic light sabre.

And the grand finale? The church is now filled with people smiling and swaying vacantly, and the kids are up at the front doing a little song and dance number called 'God forgives and God forgets'. Bibleman, seated discreetly near the back, gives it the thumbs up and all is well with the world.

Kevin Vanhoozer says this:

Truth, like Reality, is in one sense One. However, Reality is so rich and multifacted that it, like white light, can only be conveyed (verbally) by an equally rich "spectrum" - diverse literary forms. While Truth may be " about" Reality (what is, we only receive the full picture of Reality (what is) by contemplating "true" history, "true" parable, "true" song, "true" poetry. That Scripture has many literary forms is no impediment to the Truth; instead it is the very possibility of Truth's expression. The diversity of literary forms does not imply that Scripture contains competing kinds of Truth; it shows rather that Scripture is about various kinds of fact (i.e. historical, metaphysical, moral, etc.).

I've abandoned (for the moment) the dull archaeology and I'm now onto the fascinating 'bible as history/literature' kind of books.

Right now I'm reading and enjoying V. Philips Long's 'The Art of Biblical History' which is really worthwhile and well-written so as to be easily accessible.

This, quoted from Lewis Namier struck me:

What matters most in history is... 'the great outline and the significant detail; what must be avoided is [a] deadly morass of irrelevant narrative' in between.

and this on the use of the term 'fiction' with reference to history and the Bible:

...since an account of something is not literally that something, one may legitimately describe the account... as in one sense fictional. We noted, however, that because the term fiction is also used to designate a genre of literature that is not constrained by any "something" external to it (i.e., by any referential constraint), the term is not ideally suited to discussions of historiography and could profitably be replaced by less ambiguous terms such as artistry or crafting.