So the proper response to the parable of the Good Samaritan is not to ask, “Did this really happen?” but “Who is my neighbor?” And once we understand that, we are bound to admit that other portions of Scripture may convey truth in the same manner as Jesus’ parables, rather than in the genre of historical narrative. If history must be treated as history and poetry as poetry—and of course they must be—then certainly parable must be treated as parable, allegory as allegory, and myth as myth. (I’m not saying the literary genres of “allegory” or “myth” do or do not appear in the Bible; only that we can’t decide the issue before we even open our Bibles to find out.)
Darrell Pursiful on his blog, Dr. Platypus