Revelation says, “I looked, and behold, a pale horse! And its rider’s name was Death.” Do I believe that someday an anatomical human figure named Death will physically ride up on a horse? No.

When Jesus says, “I am the vine; you are the branches,” I don't think he was claiming to be a woody climbing plant. When the Psalms call God a rock, nobody thinks God is literally a geological formation. So, the question seems a bit shallow.

The mistake is assuming that literal and true are synonyms. They aren't. Poetry, metaphor, allegory, history, law, genealogy, proverb, and parable communicate truth differently. Taking the Bible seriously means first asking what kind of thing it is saying, rather than imposing a standard if literal truth on every sentence.

So, I believe the Bible contains truth. The harder and much more interesting question is what truth is a particular passage trying to communicate? Sometimes the answer is historical. Sometimes moral. Sometimes theological. Sometimes it is expressed through metaphor precisely because metaphor can communicate something that a bare factual proposition cannot.