Jesus Christ. I give up. Obviously the Bible was written, rewritten, and amended by countless ignorant old farts with lots of different views and agendas. And clearly, given the political climate and historical context in which some of the stuff was written, they needed to write in code using allegory, metaphor, and parable.
But that's not my point. My point is that your claim that the Genesis creation story was"never" taken literally is completely ridiculous.
Well, obviously some people did take it literally (and still do) but then others didn't (and are on record for it).
Just as a random example (oodles of links and stuff online if you can be bothered)
there's this.
Given the stark difference between evolution and six-day creation, many people assume that Darwin’s theory shook the foundations of the Christian faith. In truth, the literal six-day interpretation of Genesis 1-2 was not the only perspective held by Christians prior to modern science. St. Augustine (354-430), John Calvin (1509-1564), John Wesley (1703-171), and others supported the idea of Accommodation. In the Accommodation view, Genesis 1-2 was written in a simple allegorical fashion to make it easy for people of that time to understand. In fact, Augustine suggested that the 6 days of Genesis 1 describe a single day of creation. St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) argued that God did not create things in their final state, but created them to have potential to develop as he intended. The views of these and other Christian leaders are consistent with God creating life by means of evolution.
So, although they obviously had no conception of Darwinian evolution as such, they weren't total literalists either.