[lotharbot]

The particular form of excessive "everything everywhere is literal" Biblical literalism most Americans are familiar with is about a hundred years old, and arose in response to a fairly excessive "everything everywhere is allegory" Biblical non-literalism from the late 1800s.

In the past there was typically a balance. St. Basil the Great (~329 to 379) wrote "to take the literal sense and stop there, is to have the heart covered by the veil of Jewish literalism. Lamps are useless when the sun is shining." but balanced that sentiment with "There are those, truly, who do not admit the common sense of the Scriptures, for whom water is not water, but some other nature, who see in a plant, in a fish, what their fancy wishes, who change the nature of reptiles and of wild beasts to suit their allegories, like the interpreters of dreams who explain visions in sleep to make them serve their own end."

FWIW Basil emphasized a 24 hour day, but he also describes the elements of air-fire-water "hidden" in the earth: "Do not ask, then, for an enumeration of all the elements; guess, from what Holy Scripture indicates, all that is passed over in silence." (I have quoted elsewhere other scholars from both before and after him who found a slightly more figurative balance point with regard to the same passage.)