Read them as real history that is always pointing somewhere: to Christ. The Old Testament isn't a collection of moral fables or a science manual. It's the long setup for a Person, and He's the key that makes sense of it.
The Grace Answer
The giants, the flood, the long lifespans, the strange laws: for a lot of readers the Old Testament is where faith starts to feel embarrassing, and the temptation is either to defend every detail like a science textbook or to quietly file it under myth. Both moves miss what the Old Testament is actually for.
The interpretive key is not a debate about mechanics. It is a Person. On the road to Emmaus, Jesus took two confused disciples through the whole Hebrew Scriptures, and Luke says, “beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.” Jesus read the Old Testament as being about Him from start to finish. He said as much to His critics: “the Scriptures... are they which testify of Me.” The Old Testament is not primarily a rulebook for your behavior or a catalog of hero stories to imitate. It is the long, unfolding setup for the coming of Christ.
History that points, not fables that moralize
That frame changes how you handle the hard parts. You can hold these accounts as real history, given by God, without turning every chapter into a science lecture it was never trying to be. The text is doing something bigger than answering modern curiosity. It is tracing a rescue, showing again and again that humanity cannot save itself and that God is going to have to come do it Himself.
So when you hit a passage that strains your mind, resist both panic and dismissal. Ask the question the Bible is actually built to answer: how does this move the story toward Jesus? Read that way, the strange and difficult parts stop being liabilities to explain away and start being signposts, all leaning toward the cross where the whole story finally lands. The Bible was never asking you to defend it like a fragile artifact. It was inviting you to follow its trail, and the trail leads home to Jesus.