Yes, Joe: the parables are obviously fiction, and Jesus explicitly told them as such, to illustrate his points by allegory. The mythopaeic aspects of the cult he founded, on the other hand, are what need addressing. I cannot but feel you are fudging this by the irrelevancy of introducing the parables into the argument, as a sort of smokescreen to obscure what so many of us consider the absurdities of the totality of that cult of which they were a minor part, when nobody denies their fictionality. And I think you palter with two distinct and discrete meanings of the word 'truthful' in your intro clause to your last paragraph above.

Best regards

~Michael~