&gt; &gt; Creationism and biblical literalism are relatively recent &quot;innovations&quot; in some Christian traditions.<p>&gt; This isn&#x27;t really true. You&#x27;re right that metaphorical interpretations are very old, but so are literal ones.<p>The existence of some literal interpretations is not literalism. Literalism is the doctrine which excludes <i>any</i> metaphorical interpretations, and it is, in fact, relatively new (and mostly isolated to a subset of Protestantism, not general to Christianity.)