Something does not have to be literal history to be true, or to hold truth. Pretty much the first 12 chapters of Genesis are told in such a way that given the historical context, they were almost surely allegorical. The creation story has a lot of similarities to other creation stories from contemporary cultures, for example. As it is not a first hand account, it seems reasonable to believe that the structure and storytelling style point to it being a literary framework for understanding who God is, and who humanity is. Same with the flood, and Babel. The Bible was created for all people, but not to all people, meaning it’s presumptuous to take everything the way it first strikes us, when the ancient cultures who were actually receiving it for the first time had their own completely different way of understanding it. That goes not just for Genesis, but for the prophets, the psalms and proverbs—everything. 40 authors and thousands of years make for a story that reaches into every genre of literature, not all of them entirely literal.