>>But there isn’t anything in the text to suggest that Gen. 1 is a parable. It’s clearly narrative ... and I would claim its narrative history. I agree if you dwell on the details of a parable you could miss the point; but assigning a literary genre arbitrarily will guarantee you miss it.<<
What suggests to me that the Genesis story is a kind of a parable is that the people of the day couldn’t possibly understand the full story. Heck, I studied modern physics for 8 years and I only understand a tiny fraction and I have 6,000 years of scholars to lean on.
God telling man about creation is not completely different from a parent telling a child where babies come from. You don’t to a four year old who asks but you don’t tell him everything and even if you did he wouldn’t understand.
Sadly, unlike the child who will become a parent, we don’t grow up to be like God and we never really can know his whole mind on a subject...
And you bring that assumption to the text before you even begin reading it. You are saying that Gen 1 must be a parable because of the results of modern physics, not because the literary type is parable. The cart is before the horse in your interpretive scheme.
The material in Genesis is historical narrative ... this happened, then that happened, then this other thingy happened ... and so on. The entire book is like that. Whether Genesis is actual history is another question.