So then you can give me an example from the bible of:
Someting true BUT not factual
Something factual BUT not true
Love and prayer’s
Help - this turning into a thread about semantics (which is hugely important…)
Could you say what you man by “factual” ? FWIW, Tolkien believed, rightly I think, that in some sense his stories were “true”. He did not imagine that the world of hobbits, elves, orcs & the other peoples who inhabit his books were actually existing beings.
The parable of Jotham in Judges 9 attributes to plants & trees such familiar activities as taking council, seeking a ruler, refusing the honour, & speech itself. It does not follow that Jotham had lost his wits - the truth of the parable is “located” in its lesson for the listeners, not in its description of the activities of plants & trees: activities which are impossible to them, but not at all impossible to men; such as those whom Jotham was seeking to persuade by his parable.
The parable of the Good Samaritan does not require that Jesus was speaking of a really existing traveller who was set up by really existing robbers, nor that a really existing Levite & a really existing priest passed by him on the other side; nor that a really existing Samaritan helped the traveller. The story, with its mention of Jerusalem & Jericho, is probable in every respect but one: that a Samaritan would help (or be helped by) a Jew. And that is the entire point of it - it is a story that is meant to elicit a response from the hearer; the real existence of the
dramatis personae is beside the point: Jesus may have based it on real circumstances of some description, or he may have invented the whole thing: it does not matter.
What does matter, very much, is the point of the story; it matters as much as it did then, because it describes how people in every age behave. The
dramatis personae might bedifferent for us: Samaritans & Jews were at enmity in that culture, not in ours - but the point would be the same, even if the parable became (say) that of the Good Democrat helping the mugged Republican. The parable challenges & upsets our biases, & an adaptation for today would need to do the same. The person whose group we hate is sometimes our neighbour when those who might seem to be our natural allies pass by us, & on the other side. It is not “just” a story, even though it is not an account of really occuring events - so if it is to “speak to our condition”, we need to get past the specific details of the parable as it was told, & identify the modern equivalents of the characters in it; otherwise, it speaks to its own age alone.