Copper to Gold?
- Details
- Category: Scripture
- Created: Monday, 03 February 2014 03:22
- Published: Monday, 03 February 2014 03:09
- Written by Sen McGlinn's blog
- Hits: 2006

An enquirer asked: Do Bahais really believe that copper turns into gold after 70 years if protected from becoming dry (or solidified)?
The most important skill for understanding scriptures, including the Bahai scriptures, is not mastery of the original languages, or other arcane knowledge, but familiarity with literary language: the ability to read poetry and similar writing. Religious language is necessarily metaphorical, using the physical world (as understood at the time) as a correlative and reflection of spiritual realities. A literalist mind-set makes a complete hash of reading any scripture. This is a problem in all religious communities today, as modernity has given such a high status to the hard sciences and their way of describing the world that many people have never learned to read literary language as literature.