Nonsense. It just means one has to do a harder job of ferreting out the truth; of separating the wheat from the chaff.
I would say it's quite the other way. It is easy to allegorize.
Of course, if you want to go down the hyper-literal path, then you're committed to two separate Genesis events, because the Bible contains two versions of it.
No it doesn't.
Or several different Jesuses because there are variations in the stories told by the various apostles.
Again, not true.
And then there are the so-called apocrypha; stories and books that, for one reason or another some long ago group of humans decided - in committee - did not belong to the set of Church-approved writings. Is what's done, done, and none of us is entitled to exercise our own judgment to decide if those books and stories should have been thrown out? In which case your version of the Bible is simply what some other human being, or committee of human beings, told you it would be.
Again, not true. Well, true, but incidental. I do not follow cannon exactly. I embrace apocryphal and even some books considered psuedepigraphal... I am certainly free to determine which books are pertinent. Note, however, that I do hold Torah first, as being wholly defensible, and adopt much the same as the protestant canon as inviolate - The Protestant canon is agreed upon by each and every Christian denomination and discipline as being valid and unshakably the received Word, and I am no different in that.
If not, then how are those books to be evaluated?
Foremost by internal reference. Secondly by continuity (adherence to Torah and the prophets), and not to be missed, encryption, as I have said before. Every single one of the books of the approved canon contain encryption well beyond the ability of anyone to detect fully without computers. There is no way that scribes hid or maintained such things, which they could not even see...
Much of the disagreement among Biblical scholars is naught but the deuterocanonical period - and the influence of Greeks during that time. There is no dispute wrt the Tanakh, as contained in the Masoretic Text, with the exception of additions derived during the Greek period... And there is no contention wrt the Brit Hadasha (NT) whatsoever, albeit that there are several families of text... Which are of little significant difference.
Your argument here is one you will lose. There isn't another body of text on the planet that has been given such scrutiny, nor another that has been subject to such depredations, only to survive. It's very existence is a miracle in it's own right. And thirty five thousand exemplars prove it's veracity - Not another ancient script comes anywhere near.
What the text IS is largely agreed upon. It's what it SAYS that everyone fights about. To wit:
Everyone agrees upon the Protestant Canon, to include the Jews wrt the OT (book order being different).
The Catholics and Orthodox add the Deuterocanonical texts, what Protestants call the Apocrypha (7 of the 14 to be more or less precise).
The only outlier beyond that is the Ethiopian Copts, who embrace two of the Pseudepigraphal texts (Enoch and Jasher I believe).
Considering the massive opposition between denominations, that's a pretty good outcome, since each denomination has studied canon separately, and have, amid their oppositions, come to the much the same conclusions.
What if they recite as fact things that have the sense of fact based on books of the Bible as well as other non-religious texts and archeological evidence? Who decides?
But they do not have continuity with the Bible. Or their providence is in question. That is why they are not accepted. EVERYONE decided. The lion's share of the books you refer to are the gnostic texts - easily dismissed. And the extended psuedepigrapha, also easily and profoundly dismissed. Only a very few deserve a second look.
If there is one particularly that you are referring to, please let me know, as I am fairly well versed in it all.
