A metaphor is a figure of speech with both positive and negative meaning. Negatively, metaphor means non-literal. Positively, it means more-than-literal.

There's obvious benefit in looking at the Bible from the standpoint of metaphor, because so much of its language is metaphorical. It speaks, for instance, of God having hands and feet, eyes and ears, whereas God obviously has no such features. It speaks also of Jesus sitting at God's right hand, whereas there is no “seat” near to God where anyone can sit.

Sometimes the Bible uses actual history as metaphor. For example, the exile in Babylon in the sixth century BC really happened, but the way the history is also recalled in the Bible invests the telling with metaphorical meaning. It becomes a narrative of exile and return, one of the more important Biblical images of the human condition (alienation) and its remedy.

At other times, there's little history behind the stories. The stories in Genesis about creation, for instance, the Garden of Eden, the expulsion of Adam and Eve, Cain's murder of Abel, Noah and the Flood, the Tower of Babel , are all metaphorical narratives. They are not reporting the early history of humanity. Yet, as metaphorical narratives, they convey profound though not factual truth.

Western culture is practically tone deaf to metaphor. We prefer plain, factual reporting. A standard question to any of the narratives in the preceding paragraph is: “Is it true?” Which means “did it happen?” If didn't actually happen, its truth value is almost nil.

For the past two centuries, some Christians have strongly defended the literal factuality of the narratives in Genesis, from the creation in six days through the expulsion of Adam and Eve. Conflicts have raged over God versus evolution, God versus science.

The reason for the passion of the advocates of literalness is that if the stories are not factual, they aren't true. And if they aren't true, the Bible isn't true. What is at stake is the Bible itself!

Seeing the truth of metaphor in the Bible is therefore not something of casual or minimal importance. The important distinction is that between the truth of fact or history and the truth of metaphor.

Thomas Mann, the great German laureate, defined a myth (a special kind of metaphorical narrative) as “a story about the way things never were, but always are.” Is a myth therefore true? Literally no, but really true, yes.

We're still in the Christmas season but just out of the immediacy of the events, so to speak. The stories of Jesus' birth in Matthew and Luke provide another illustration of the truth of metaphor. Like the Genesis stories, they have been a source of conflict among Christians.

Some Christians insist that they are and must be seen as factual narratives: that there really were wise men who were led by a special star to Bethlehem , and that angels really sang to the shepherds in the night sky.

Some Christians also see these narratives as a test of orthodoxy. If you don't believe in their literal truth, you may not be truly Christian. Others understand them as metaphor, not as historical reports, largely so, I think, because they sense the symbolic motifs and symbolic significance in them.

What does a metaphorical reading yield of the Christmas narrative? The special star and the glory of the Lord filling the night sky suggest that this is the story of light in our darkness, that, in the language of the gospel of John, Jesus is the “ light of the world ,” the “ true light that enlightens every person .”

The story of non-Jewish kings or “wise men” coming to Bethlehem affirms that Jesus is meant not only for Israel but for all nations and cultures. The feast of the Epiphany means he is made “manifest” or disclosed to them.

The story of the shepherds as the first to be told of the birth, affirms that the good news, the gospel, is especially for the marginalised.

The song of the angels declares that Jesus is Lord and Saviour – and thus Caesar, who uses these titles for himself – is not.

The story of King Herod ordering the slaughter of male babies echoes the story of Pharaoh issuing a similar order in the time of Moses. It suggests that Jesus is a new Moses, that a new exodus is about to happen, and that the Pharaohs and Herods of this world always try to destroy the bearer of God's liberating word, but their efforts are in vain.

Read metaphorically, the stories mean all of this, and perhaps much more. A factual interpretation can distract from it all. When one emphasises factuality, the miraculous elements inevitably become objects of contention. The issue becomes a matter of belief as to whether any of the events actually occurred.

An endless, sterile debate ensues between those who think they did, and those who think they didn't, an endless, sterile back and forth. The rich, metaphorical meanings end up cast by the wayside.