This is somewhat muddled by the idea that the original story may have been an oral tradition for some time before being written down - that is to say, the person who put pen to paper may not have been the one to create the story in the first place, and may in fact have been removed from that person by several generations.

So it is quite possible that whoever originally created the story may have intended it as fiction with a moral, but that it may have been understood as history by the person who put stylus to papyrus. Or it may have started out as history, gained some embellishment along the way, then rephrased to highlight a perceived moral, then embellished again to further highlight that moral, then only written down.

I am very uncertain of the history behind how it got there. I think that it is most probable that it is now fiction with a moral; and I think that there have been a whole lot of biblical passages that have been very firmly, and very publically, misunderstood by some people with very loud voices (such as pretty much the entire Creationism movement).

The fourth is fair enough, but it seems to me that (what I take to be) ChristianKI's inference "the bible contains this story, which is not true, so we should reduce our general confidence in what the bible says" is then reasonable (and indeed the decision to understand as fiction something in the bible that wasn't originally intended that way amounts to conceding that point).

I think that the Bible, especially the Old Testament, is a collection of some fiction, some non-fiction - one of the clearest examples of fiction (to my eyes) is the book of Job, which seems to be an entire story written in such a way that it can be performed as a play by a handful of actors with little-to-no equipment (all the dramatic stuff happens off-stage and is introduced by messengers running in and shouting "This happened!").

I think that the morals that the fictional parts try to show are important; they should not be simply discounted and tossed aside because they did not happen.

I think there are multiple morals.

• If you do something that you know you shouldn't, there will almost certainly be bad consequences.
• Not knowing what those consequences are will not prevent them from happening.
• If you act in the correct way and take competent instruction, you can save yourself even while everyone around you dies.
• In such circumstances, it may not actually be possible to save those around you without dooming yourself.
• When going out into a dangerous situation, find some way to check how safe it is first.
• Look after your animals. (This would be more relevant in a more agricultural society)