Thank you for the question, “I have a question for historians, was the book of Genesis meant to be taken literally?”
The Book of Genesis can’t be separated from Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. It is one continuous record of the beginning of mankind to one person who became a people group.
Although I am not a historian, I have studied world history and the history of the Christian faith in college and in seminary.
Every people group have their history or story of their origin from the indigenous people to conquering people. The Jewish people for centuries accepted the Torah as their history, not as a fable or fiction. The belief in the Creator God was not a myth or stories for all their traditions and practices finds its source in the commands of God. Throughout Jewish history, they believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob being real people.
The historian Josephus wrote in his Antiquities of the Jews the history of Israel that includes his recounting of Genesis. He believed the Torah as history, not as a fable. Modern scholars dispute the historicity of Genesis, but the location of places are real, not fictional as the Tigris and Euphrates River, Pharaoh and the Philistines, Sodom and Gomorrah, Ur of the Chaldeans. Historians may dispute the persons in the Torah, but there is some credibility to its location.
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