Hey Jonathan, I am wondering under this interpretation why adultery (whether defined by sex or not) is punishable by death?

Are you interpreting it more as blasphemy or heresy, so if you are heretical you deserve death?

Also, given how old the Bible is and how many times it has been tinkered with, is looking for the "true meaning" of it necessarily a good thing, given the people who wrote the Old Testament weren't necessarily more moral people than we are now, they owned slaves for example.

I guess the question I have is:

1. Does the Bible actually have internal consistency or is it a collection of writings written by different people and thus may contradict itself inherently

2. Even if it does have internal consistency does that make it true? The Lord of the Rings has internal consistency but no one argues it should be taken literally.