Sorry, I made a typo, what I meant to say was "although the story was for the people of it's time, doesn't mean it can't hold universal truths. One of my numerous examples is as follows:

The Book of Genesis is the first book of the Bible, of the Old Testament. It starts explaining the creation of the universe, as we know it. Adam and Eve were the first humans but they were deceived into eating from the Tree of Knowledge. God had forbidden touching this tree that he had planted in the middle of the Garden of Eden. The act brought the first humans’ fall, their expulsion from paradise. Hence they would be mortals and from then on starts the history of the human race as explained by the tradition of the Hebrew people. Here as stories as told over centuries by wandering poets and tellers, who recall the old tales over campfire in the evening. These stories form the tradition of a people that cared about its origins, its history and that was avid for explanations of why the world was as they perceived. Why were there humans, why were humans mortal, why were there languages and different kinds of people? Venerated stories were repeated and accepted as universal truths by generations.

Genesis talks about the brother feud between Cain and Abel and of the birth of Seth, last son to Adam and Eve. The descendants of Cain and of Seth are enumerated in an attempt to explain the various people in the known world of the Hebrews. The enumeration goes until the flood came. The story of the great flood that destroyed the world is Noah’s story. Noah was the only to survive in the arch with his family and a small selection of all the animals. These stories have reverberations far into the memories of the people of the Tigris and Euphrates region.

With Noah the Book of Genesis tells of the first covenant of God with humans. Yahweh promised to Noah, the just, never to flood the earth again and as a sign of the covenant he drew the rainbow in the skies. The chapter on Noah contains again an enumeration of descendants. Now the list includes potentates and kings of the lands. One of these built the tower of Babel. God destroyed the tower because he saw that humans could do anything they put their mind to. But God created confusion by inventing the different languages. The tale of the tower of Babel is a masterpiece of folklore explanation of the existence of various languages. This was but one explanation of a puzzling fact of life. How many other tales of observation by the people on the strangeness and diversity of their world were lost?

One feels that the stories of the Book of Genesis try to explain anomalies of the world. Why was Egypt a land ruled by only one king? Joseph’s story explains in Hebrew terms and in Hebrew origins the united state. There was a famine in Egypt but Pharaoh through Joseph was prepared for it. Joseph gave food for money. When the money was gone he gave food for livestock and then land for grain and cattle. Thus, the whole country came into Pharaoh’s possession and Egypt became the land of one king, contrary to the political organisation of the Mesopotamian city-states with its various peoples living in the lands of Euphrates and Tigris where also the Hebrews originated. Only the lands of the priests did not go to Pharaoh. Was it priests that wrote the Book of Genesis? Other narratives tried to explain the diversity of the races that lived in the land of the Hebrews. The existence of two major races in Canaan was explained as the descendants of Isaac. Jacob became Israel and the Arabs descended from Ishmael and were consistently called Ishmaelites in Genesis. Many other stories like these must have existed but were probably not recorded in the Bible. The pieces that have come to use are all the more precious because we feel clearly the eager for understanding of the world by an inquisitive people.