how do you arrive at that conclusion ? relative novelty.
It's a description rather than a conclusion, and it's one that was qualified so I'll expand on it. It is clear that it has not been Christianity's sole opinion that everything in the Bible is literally true, as we can see given that Augustine warned against such thinking. That said, there is obviously some ideas that have been challenged which have essentially been seen as literally true e.g. the idea that the sun orbited the earth, though teven there sine of the strength of reaction against that idea cane from the high regard for Aristotle. Further, the Copernican revolution, came from a strong Christian.
It's then when as covered in wigginhall and Gonnagle's posts on here you get a set, and sects. Of Christianity who react in two ways to the scientific revolution. One set going down the rational apologetics route, and creating 'rational' arguments for Christianity, arguably starting with Descartes, and nowadays most prominently represented by William Lane Craig (which I cannot but help think is a sad decline). The other set became in reaction to the challenge fixed on the idea that science could be in opposition to the Bible as they read and had to then be challenged, and this is definitely clear and known in the late 1700s.
Now whether that qualifies as relative novelty over the course of 2 thousand years, and with the strand of thought extant before that in Judaism that the OT was allegorical, is a matter if opinion and perspective but certainly is what it seems to me.
