There are no answers in Genesis

[arewethereyet]

From the time I was very young, I saw the Bible stories as being quite similar to Aesop's Fables.  Stories to teach a lesson.  I didn't buy into the Bible stories as reality for the same reason I didn't think grasshoppers and ants were talking to one another.  I don't think I was even in school yet when I made that connection.

Never once did I think Jonah lived in the belly of a whale, never once did I think the animals marched onto a big boat two-by-two, and the list goes on.

Stories with a purpose that was not to teach historical reality.  Sure, some settings were real, don't most authors draw from what is around them?  Maybe not sci-fi, but you get the idea.

But did your Sunday School teachers ever tell you that Jonah and the whale (or any other story from the Bible) never happened and that it is only a metaphor?

No, they didn't.  Not in catechism classes or through my many years at full Catholic schools.