You mean virtually all Bible scholars haven't taken a literal interpretation?
I believe it was a typo.
Jewish and Christian scholars have, since antiquity, often understood the text non-literally, or at least as having layers of meaning.
An example of this is that Theophilus of Antioch, an early Christian apologist from the 2nd century and the first on record to use the word trias ("Trinity") in writing, uses the days of the creation to speak of the greatness of God, as pointing toward precious divine truths, and also about the vanities of pagan philosophy and mythology. For example, he argues that plants arise on the third day even before there was sun to nourish and sustain them, and this is written that mere creatures--the heavenly bodies--be regarded as preeminent, but are no less mere created matter than the plants themselves. What which is by appearance less glorious (plants) proceeds that which is by appearance more glorious (the sun).
Even as early as Origen in the 3rd century he points out that, from a purely surface level literal reading of the text, that to speak of "evening and morning" prior to there being a sun in the sky makes no sense, concluding that something more important is going on in the text than just a sequence of events.
In rabbinical literature, various rabbis and sages argue things such as when the angels were created, with some pointing to the first day with the creation of the light; which is somewhat similar to St. Augustine's allegorical reading of the text, where the light of the first day are the heavenly angels; for Augustine the six days are more of a framing device, as Augustine understood, from a Latin translation of a passage from the book of Sirach which speaks of God creating all things in an instant.
Augustine in fact argues that all things were made instantaneously, in "seminal form", like seeds, and then developed, or we might even say evolved, into their present forms. Though Augustine also took the position, that a number of Jewish and Christian thinkers did in antiquity, that the days of creation allegorically or spiritually convey the entire period of history--six thousand years, a thousand years corresponding to each day of creation. Though according to Augustine's and other Christian thinkers of antiquity, their chronology had them near the end of the six thousand years--using their chronology the year 6,000 Anno Mundi would have been pretty close to about the time the Western Roman Empire fell. Which, of course, some Christians did feel was evident of the world ending, but then people got over it and moved on, and we don't really see too much of that only six thousand years business too much (or at least, that I'm aware of, it might be there).
Not until James Ussher anyway.
-CryptoLutheran
