Majority of Americans Believe in “Literal Biblical Accounts”

Feb 17, 2004 04:33 AM EST

WASHINGTON - An ABC (American Broadcasting Company) poll released Sunday revealed that a majority of Americans believed that the stories in the bible are literally true, but not that Jews are collectively responsibility for the death of Jesus.

"While religious belief is a strong factor in a literal reading of the Bible, it plays far less of a role in views of collective responsibility for Christ's death," the poll found.

Sixty-four percent of those polled believed that the story of Moses parting the Red sea was “literally true, meaning it happened that way word-for-word." Sixty-one percent believed in the story of creation while 60 percent believed in the story of Noah and the flood.

The rest, about 30 percent, said that stories in the Bible are meant to serve as a lesson and "not to be taken literally."

According to the poll, which was conducted Feb 6-10 on 1,011 adults, literal belief peaked among evangelical Protestants.