How dare you try to take on someone named Agrarian on the subject of animals! :-)
I am unaware of Christ, the Apostles, or the Fathers reaffirming any of the things from Leviticus you mention. If they claim that bats and birds are the same thing, I missed it.
You were taking at face value the claims of modern scholars that the Patriarchs, Moses and the Exodus, David, Solomon, etc. didn't exist. And that in the face of clear statements by Christ and the Apostles that they did.
Surely you see the difference between that and whether the hare chews the cud or not.
The verse from Numbers does not say that the tabernacle is the source of leprosy. Furthermore, the word leprosy was used to describe any number of skin changes or conditions. It was not synonymous with Hansen's disease as it now is. (That particular disease is caused by a mycobacterium by the way, just in case you wonder whether I can answer that one off the top of my head.) :-)
In any event, do you maintain that it is impossible for the shocking experience of the presence of God in the face of Miriam's sin to cause a change in her physical appearance, just as in the presence of holiness it can be expressed in the form of Moses' skin shining like the sun? Or do you doubt that that happened, too, and that the Fathers who refer to it are telling crazy tales and deluding themselves into thinking that they also were seeing the uncreated light?
And there are lots of poetic and metaphorical things in the Scriptures. The pillars of the earth are just the beginning. If you want to go there, the list will be very long.
What I want to know is what any of this has to do with whether we should take the words of modern scholars over the words of Christ and the Apostles on whether the Patriarchs, Moses, David, and Solomon were real people who did the things the Bible says about them.
Why didn't you ask if I believe Job was a real person too? It makes no difference, Agrarian. To me it makes no difference. I really don't care if the Bible has historical or geographical or astronomical, or botanical accuracy. I don't use and see the Bible as an Encyclopedia Judaica, from which I can reliably find out whence came the dinasaurs, the Triffid Nebula, or Hansen's disease [I see you didn't skip school that day :) ].
What matters to me, is whether it is spiritually infallible, and I believe it is. It is the message in each verse, in each chapter, and in each book that is important. What's the message? is what I ask myself. What's God telling me?
That's why I threw in the galaxies — God's Creation speaks for itself that everything is possible with God. That's why science cannot diminish God, or throw doubt into His word. It's not whether everyting is possible with God that is at stake, but human interpretation of what happens or how it happens.
Today we know that the earth is not flat and does not have four corners. Does that change anything as far as God's truth is concerned? Does the fact that ancient Hebrews could not distiniguish that bats are not fowl make Bible unreliable? Perhaps as a source of zoology, but that's not what the Bible is for, as I mentioned earlier.
So, what would happen if the Israeli scientists were right? If the writers of the Bible used not just metaphors but persons who did not exist in order to narrate a story that carried a spiritual message? What if Job really did not exist? Does that change what the book of Job has to say? What if Adam and Eve are only proverbial parents of ours and not real, historical ones? Does that change the message of their transgression, does it make us any less fallen? Can we not relate to everything that is in the Bible and see ourselves in it? It reaches into our very being, as we are, what we know, feel, believe, see, think, do. Is that not what really matters?
You talk about hesychastic Fathers. They don't reference the Scripture to prove historical facts, but to show spiritual truth that's in it. Faith, after all, is a personal experience — as you aptly say to qua. It is an entirely personal relaitonship with God that no one else can share, prove or disprove. It is, as +Gregory Nazianzen says, "that which completes our argument."