literalism

noun

Etymology: Etymology tree Late Latin littera Proto-Indo-European *h₂el-der.? Proto-Italic *-ālis Late Latin -ālis Late Latin litterālisbor. Old French literalbor. Middle English literal English literal Proto-Indo-European *-id- Proto-Indo-European *-yéti Proto-Indo-European *-idyéti Proto-Hellenic *-íďďō Ancient Greek -ῐ́ζω (-ĭ́zō) Proto-Indo-European *-mos Proto-Indo-European *-mós Ancient Greek -μός (-mós) Ancient Greek -ισμός (-ismós)der. English -ism English literalism From literal + -ism.

1. Literal interpretation or understanding; adherence to the exact letter or precise significance, as in interpreting or translating.

   “Literal interpretation has always been a marked feature of Premillennialism; in Dispensationalism it has been carried to an extreme. We have seen that this literalism found its most thoroughgoing expression in the claim that Israel must mean Israel, that it cannot mean the Church, that the Old Testament prophecies regarding Israel concern the earthly Israel, and that the Church was a mystery, unknown to the prophets and first made known to the apostle Paul. Now if the principle of interpretation is adopted that Israel always means Israel, that it does not mean the Church, then it follows of necessity that practically all of our information regarding the millennium will concern a Jewish or Israelitish age.”

   “Elsewhere, the liturgiologists were said to have "disembowelled the language of the Book of Common Prayer and the Bible" and produced in its place "the bland literalisms of Series 3 and the ASB[.]"”

2. The style of art portraying a subject as literally and accurately as possible.

   “The two main forms of literalism are ergism and orthodoxy.”