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Believe it or not the idea of reading Genesis literally was an Enlightenment era problem tied predominately with the linking of the biblical story to a the foreign element of Aristotilian scientific method.
The Bible is a spiritual book, not a history (as has been mentioned). That doesn't mean there's no history in it, but rather than each book has to be understood on its own terms. The Bible is fundamentally a library. As any good speech about any real point contains events anecdotal, parabolic, and literal, so does the bible.
Believe it or not early Christians dwelled very infrequently on apologizing for the "historicity" of their religion. Origen, a very significant Alexandria Christian thinker in the 3rd century, had a very low opinion of people who insisted on literal versions of many biblical stories. He considered them crazy and out of touch with the oldest Christian traditions.
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