There's also the problem of people taking things meant to be metaphorical as literal, simply because, well, it's right there, right?

For example (just ran into this today):

Early in the morning, as Jesus was on his way back to the city, he was hungry. Seeing a fig tree by the road, he went up to it but found nothing on it except leaves. Then he said to it, “May you never bear fruit again!” Immediately the tree withered. Matthew 21:18-22 NIV

This is pretty clearly an illustration. "Like this tree, you'd better actually give results, not just give the appearance of being moral". (In fact, I believe Jesus uses this exact illustration in a sermon later.)

And yet, I saw this on a list of "God's Temper Tantrums that Christians Never Mention", presumably interpreted as "Jesus zapped a tree because it annoyed him."

Except that I think another reasonable interpretation is: whoever edited the text into a form that contains both stories did notice that they are inconsistent, didn't imagine that somehow they are both simultaneously correct, but did intend them to be taken at face value -- the implicit thinking being something like "obviously at least one of these is wrong somewhere, but both of them are here in our tradition; probably one is right and the other wrong; I'll preserve them both, so that at least the truth is in here somewhere".

Ooh, I hadn't thought of that.