What exactly do you mean by option (b)? * That whoever originally wrote that story intended it to be understood as fiction with a moral, rather than as truth? * That it may have originated as (alleged) history, but whoever incorporated it into the documents that became Jewish and Christian scriptures did so with the intention that it should be understood as fiction with a moral? * That whoever wrote it may have intended it to be seriously believed, but God arranged for it to land up in the Jewish and Christian scriptures with the intention that it should be treated as fiction with a moral? * That it doesn't really matter why it was written or how it got into the scriptures, but nowadays it should be understood as fiction? * Something else? It seems to me that the first three of these imply a certain degree of incompetence on the part of the writers, editors, or god concerned, given how widely the story has been treated as history since its incorporation into scripture. 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). Of course if the fifth option is right then all of the above may be moot.