#we had a couple whackjobs who thought the world was created in 7 literal days

[unbidden-yidden]

I may regret asking this, but I have an interdenominational, interfaith question about the literalness of the Bible for folks who are familiar with the doctrine of the more conservative denominations of Christianity.

So in the more traditional branches of Judaism, it is generally held that the Torah was given to Moses on Mt. Sinai, word-for-word. However, the other two sections of the Tanakh are not literally the Word of God, but rather the words of the prophets and important sacred writings (poems, histories, etc.) Now, obviously there is a spectrum of beliefs and more liberal Jews will attribute the five books of Moses to more earthly sources, while still holding them as very sacred. However, even the strictest of orthodox Jews still interpret the Torah and base their understanding of halacha on the Talmud and commentaries. Bottom line: in Judaism, the absolute *most* amount of sacred texts that form the Hebrew Bible that are attributable to God as God's direct words are the books of Torah, which are still interpreted by human beings to be able to be put into practice.

However, I have come across an alarming amount of Christians who say they take the [whole?] Bible literally. I genuinely don't understand what is meant by this, as only the first five books were ever attributed to God as direct revelation, and so even if you assume that the New Testament is also 100% verbatim word-of-God revelation (which I don't know for certain if these Christians do assume that) you're still missing the vast chunk of the Prophets and Writings from the Old Testament.

So I guess my questions are: When Christians say they 'take the [whole] Bible literally,' what do they actually mean by this in practice, since even the Hebrew Bible (never mind the whole Christian Bible) has tons of apparent contradictions that can only be resolved through interpretation? Is this actually common and/or historical doctrine? Or is this American Christianity being bizarre, especially in the last 50 years?

Do Christians who hold by this concept make a distinction between the books of Torah and the rest of the Bible? If not, how do they get around the fact that the other books were not verbatim revelation?