jwb

the idea that there's more than one way to read the text doesn't mean there's an infinite number of interpretations. E.G. there is perhaps some ambiguity about whether Christians should try to follow Mosaic law but there is absolutely no ambiguity about the fact that Mosaic law prescribes the death penalty for having gay sex.

It's also important to point out that there are different genres of writing within the holy books themselves, some of which lend themselves to allegory and metaphor more than others. So Ecclesiastes or Psalms is much more ambiguous in its meaning than Leviticus or Deuteronomy.

The Quran and Hadiths also has different types of passages, some more ambiguous than others. So maybe it's ambiguous exactly what punishment should be meted out to adulterers, for example, because the Quran prescribes a different punishment than the Hadiths. But the fact that adultery is wrong or haram and should be considered a crime is not at all ambiguous.

So ultimately I think the different interpretations argument doesn't offer nearly as much flexibility as you think it does. Religious texts are also not unique in this regard. Marx's writing is also interpreted differently by different readers... But there is a basic core message that if you miss that in his writing that's just a failure at reading comprehension rather than a truly viable alternative interpretation.

To the extent there are progressive adherents to Abrahamic religion, those are people who simply don't follow/ignore large parts of the text that has a backwards message. Which I think is a good thing, but make no mistake that this is what they are doing.

Don't get me wrong, extremists typically do this too and they ignore some of the good parts of the text. There's virtually nobody that follows it completely faithfully as you suggest, but that's because it's contradictory and ultimately not really worth following at all, rather than there being some more enlightened way to interpret it.