A cradle Catholic, I was taught that the Bible is divinely inspired and free from substantial moral error, but that it is not a science or history text and should not be taken as such. That leaves a lot of room for everything from simple errors in fact to literary invention. And it is hard for me to believe that written in Old Hebrew script as the essential religious text of a minor, insular people, that the Book of Genesis and the rest of the Old Testament somehow made it to Japan, China, and India, the Americas, and so on as to become the basis for all the world’s flood stories.
. And the Bible is free from any moral error.
While it is not a science or history book it is accurate in those areas. The purpose of Scripture is to point us to God and ultimately to faith in Christ, and only Christ, for salvation.