So True - I can't believe its taken me 22 years to think of this

Aggadic Midrash can be seen as evidence that Hazal didn't take Biblical narrative literally. At the very least, they must have viewed the "truthiness" of Biblical narrative very differently than we do today.

This is what I mean:
a. Assume that midrashim themselves aren't meant literally/factually/historically. I think thats a fair assumption and is accurate at least 75% of the time.

b. I can't imagine building a whole conscious genre of midrashim on something that you imagined was in fact literal and factual and historical. I just can't imagine it! Would someone write midrash-esque stuff on, say, . . . Six Days of War, or Ghandi's biography, or the Diary of Anne Frank?

c. I'm not really sure how Hazal viewed the "truthiness" of Biblical narrative, and I'm not close to confident about taking a radical view. This much, however, needs be kept in mind: the fact that Hazal wrote midrashim on Tanakh says something interesting about how they viewed Biblical narrative . . . and that something is important and requires deeper thought.