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I'd take it the same way that I'd take a living interlocutor's speech. Somebody talks, and there are times when he's speaking metaphorically, using an analogy to make his point, or is speaking "literally"--referential words have an actual referent that is in line with the words' base meanings, not referring to something else because of some overlapping attribute or property. Sometimes it's ambiguous.
"Luke just kicked the bucket" may be ambiguous. It's New Year's Eve, the nursing home's just had a party and the desk clerk is in the john. "I'm here to see Luke." (drunk off-duty employee covering for desk clerk:) "Luke just kicked the bucket." Still New Year's eve, same drunk off-duty desk clerk. Manager asks: "What was that horrible noise?" "Luke just kicked the bucket."
When asking if a historian means what he wrote to be taken literally, he's likely to say yes: and if somebody points out a metaphor, he'd regard that as mere snarkiness and nit-picking, part of an attempt to not understand what he wrote. It happens. You don't have to be on drugs to use metaphors. (Sometimes it may help.)
There are poetic passages in the Bible that make obvious use of metaphor and allusion. To wedge those into a literalist reading would be silly, counter the obvious intent.
There are passages that aren't poetic, but are to be understood literally; this doesn't claim they're accurate, just that the write believe them to be accurate, or accuate enough. Some are historical. Some are prophetic. Some are what would strictly have to be called mythic. Now, it's trite for everybody to believe that their ancestors (spiritual or genetic) weren't stupid, that they didn't believe in sky gods and their pecadilloes. I heard one Native American insist that nobody actually ever took any of their myths for truth--only ever as metaphor. Seems farfetched, that, and self-serving.
There are passages in which the obvious referent probably isn't the real referent: To some extent religion has to extend the meanings of words since, well, they talk about things that nobody in the listening audience has actually seen (some cognitive linguists would call this metaphor, but that's their schtick: most historical linguists would simply call it "extension", making use of an existing word to name a new thing). There are other places where the context and reasonable rules of interpretation (the kind that serve us in daily use) alleviate some of the weirdness derived from decontextualized scripture citation.
Then there are passages where you have to wonder: It's not clear, and denominations and exegetes have to take a stand--it might be ambiguous, but is it? Is it literal? Or is it metaphorical? Even "literalists" will sometimes disagree on what's ambiguous, and how to resolve the ambiguity.
The extreme converse of "literalism" (i.e., "original intent") is to adopt a highly metaphorical reading. The writer didn't intend, by talking about the Exodus, to say the Israelites came out of Egypt; no, he's talking about centuries-long ethnogenesis in which NW Semitic tribes, when faced with Egyptian influence and conflict with nearby tribes (Semitic and otherwise), are said to have coalesced into a single ethnicity that only existed post-Babylonian-exile. He was myth building. This shows that religious anthropologists only in the late 20th century reached the kind of intellectual sophistication and understanding that was tacitly accepted by the 7th century editors (or previous writers even older, if the editors merely trivially updated older documents). Now, they don't mean to do that, but I think that's what the few people taking such an extreme view are left with.
In between are hybrids. The writer meant it literally, but we interpret it metaphorically--whatever it is. Or he overstated, on his own authority, how something's to be applied, or stated his reasons and not the "right" reasons. Many variants on it. Some are closer to literal than others.
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