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But here's absolutely nothing in Matthew 20 that says 'This is a parable'. It starts (as I'm sure you know) with 'For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which went out early in the morning to hire labourers into his vineyard". Jesus never said the householder was a hypothetical householder, even though I think it's pretty clear He didn't have to find a householder somewhere in history that did precisely the things recounted in Matthew 20. It was well understood to his listeners, and to us, that he was telling a story.

I think much of the Old Testament is likewise meant to be taken as a parable - in particular the account of creation in Genesis is surely meant to be a parable. Let's suppose God *had* used evolution as a means of creating life. After all, we are hardly in position to decide for God how He goes about His business, are we? How would God have explained that to the ancient Israelites. "In the beginning there were four DNA bases, adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine"? Of course not. he told the a story in the terms they could understand. They were well used to allegory as a means of illuminating complex truths; they wouldn't have considered Genesis false, even if they *were* aware of the vastly more complex ways the process really occurred. So why should we?