In recent posts I've referred to some who claim that Genesis 1 is other than history. Typically these people will say that it's analogy, parable, metaphor, allegory, polemic or anything but an account of events that happened.
Proponents rarely declare the basis in reality, at the time of its writing, to which the text would refer analogically, metaphorically, parabolically, etc.
The scope of the problem these authors back themselves into can be illustrated if we look at the 'polemic' view of Genesis 1.
On the one hand, the Babylonians compose the Enuma Elish: so up come the Israelites with a counter story of origins (not that EE is really a cosmogony, its more a theogony). Your story vs. my story. But which story is right? If neither refers to what really occurred, then the polemic is empty and we still don't know what really happened, we just have a contest of tales that would descend instantly to a contest of preference, not truth; but surely the real should be accessible to the creator to tell us why he is the creator by telling us how he created, not how he didn't create as though this would persuade us of a fact that the claim cannot explicate! (if the creator can't present his credentials as creator in terms that make sense with reference to his actual creation, it becomes hard to discern the credential!)
This empty result is the end game of all non-literal interpretations of Genesis 1. They get us nowhere and leave the telling of what this cosmos really is to others. Some theologians support this project on the basis that we have the intelligence to examine the creation and determine its origin. However, scientific examination cannot be definitive of past singularities, it only uses the regular as its reference point. So we end up with a fundamentally religious (or at least historical) issue being divorced from the scope of God's revelation.
Separate the creation from the ability of the creator to communicate the connection between our world and his will, and we pretty quickly separate ourselves from God. This is why the idea of evolution is the mainstay of modern atheism. Atheists see the disconnection; what a betrayal of thought that so many theologians fail to.
