[Serious] Literal and Not Literal

[GrandizerII]

Some writings are clearly meant to be taken symbolically such as Revelation. But it's not really clear to me that any part of, say, Genesis was originally intended to be symbolic on the whole.

When you were a kid, and the teacher read a fable, like the three little pigs, Where you confused as to whether she was reading a historical account or non- historical one?

Not the same. That's a fairy tale, not a myth. Cosmogony myths were used to explain how the world came to be. There's no reason to suggest it wasn't taken literally by at least some of the ancients.

I dont think it's that hard to recognize that the Genesis accounts aren't literal.

How do you know it wasn't intended to be taken literally at the start? Can we see an actual argument instead of confident appeals to personal intuition?

You make two buckets. Take all styles of writing we know are non-historical, and all the styles of writing that are historical, and then ask yourself which bucket the style in which the garden of Eden story, the flood, etc.. written resembles the most?

It seems to me it could've been seen as "history" in the mythical sense.