Having taught English I can tell you that that position is not logical. Any good student of the English language can tell the difference between prose/poetry and literal expressions.
Too bad the Bible wasn't written in English then.
But compare Genesis 7:11 "In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened."
with;
I Kings 6;1 "And it came to pass in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the month Zif, which is the second month, that he began to build the house of the LORD."
There is no difference in the linguisitic expressions of the two different accounts that were many centuries apart.
Really? I can tell you two significant ones.
Firstly, you need to look at the verses surrounding Genesis 7:11. (For all our differences, I'm sure you would agree with me that context is vital to understanding a verse.)
Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters came upon the earth. And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him went into the ark to escape the waters of the flood. Of clean animals, and of animals that are not clean, and of birds, and of everything that creeps on the ground, two and two, male and female, went into the ark with Noah, as God had commanded Noah. And after seven days the waters of the flood came upon the earth.
In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened. On the very same day Noah and his sons, Shem and Ham and Japheth, and Noah's wife and the three wives of his sons with them entered the ark, they and every beast, according to its kind, and all the livestock according to their kinds, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, according to its kind, and every bird, according to its kind, every winged creature. They went into the ark with Noah, two and two of all flesh in which there was the breath of life. And those that entered, male and female of all flesh, went in as God had commanded him. And the Lord shut him in. (Gen 7:6-16, ESV; emphases added)
Now isn't that a funny thing for the author of Genesis to write? Imagine if the narrative text of your morning newspaper read as follows: "47-year-old Barack Obama has just been elected the first black President of the United States. His main running rival John McCain has conceded defeat and congratulated the black senator. Barack Obama was 47 years and 3 months old when he became the first black President of the United States by ... " The repetition of facts is quite unlike most of our attempts to write a story, though it is common in oral conversation.
There certainly isn't any repetition of narrative elements in the 1 Kings 6 account of Solomon's building of the Temple, but there are four in just this short passage of Noah's story: Noah's age, the onset of the flood, the human passengers on the ark, and the animal passengers on the ark. In fact, the narrative is basically as repetitive as it can be without simply having the same chunk of text repeated twice. The higher critic will immediately say that this represents the work of an editor redacting two different sources together.
Now I don't quite agree with that view, but we should not be hasty to dismiss it offhand. It certainly doesn't contravene the inspiration of Scripture. How is the seamless editing of different sources into a unified whole any different from the opening mosaic of Hebrews?
For to which of the angels did God ever say, You are my Son, today I have begotten you? Or again, I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son? And again, when he brings the firstborn into the world, he says, Let all God's angels worship him. (Heb 1:5-6, ESV)
In this passage four voices (the Psalms, 2 Sam/1 Chr, Deuteronomy, and the author of Hebrews himself) are merged into a seamless whole, with no hint that multiple sources are being cited, and no threat to the doctrines of plenary verbal inspiration and scriptural infallibility.
And yet, if we are not convinced for whatever reason that the repetition of elements represents proof of editing, what other options are left open? The next most plausible case, I would say, is that it must be Hebrew poetry, which employs parallelism in spades:
​​​​​​​​Blessed is the man who
walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
​​​​​​​​but
his delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law he meditates day and night.
(Ps 1:1-2, ESV)
We see here the parallels of both similarity (in each unit - one set of parallels for the wicked, and another for the meditation of the Law) and opposition (the wicked against the lawful). But if Genesis 7 is semi-poetic in nature, then it clearly belongs in a different genre from 1 Kings 6.
In any case, the repetitive literary elements are one difference. The metaphorical descriptions of physical realities are another. For where else in the Bible is the phrase "the windows of heaven" used? Only three other passages in the Old Testament employ it: 2 Kings 7:2 and 7:19; Isaiah 24:18; and Malachi 3:10. In Isaiah 24:18 the reference is simply to the destruction of the Earth; but the other two references are more illuminating. In both cases the "windows of heaven" opening are a reference to God granting His people material blessings. That alone makes the Genesis reference quite unique.
Furthermore, in the other two references, the windows of heaven are entirely metaphorical - no reader would expect the material blessings described to actually be raining down from the skies. In the Gen 7 passage, on the other hand, the windows of heaven must be referring to something material if the whole passage is to be read literally - that is, the windows of heaven must actually be something up above our heads. Now that does not necessarily imply a primitive cosmology - the windows of heaven may simply be clouds, for example. But that again sets the Gen 7 narrative apart from the rest of the Old Testament; and the place which comes closest to using such florid descriptions of natural phenomena is Job 38, which again is poetic instead of prose.
Both of these differences set Genesis 7 apart and form at least a partial case for interpreting it non-literally.
