Legitimate ignorance vs. willful deception in biblical language

A recent comment suggested that language in the Bible such as
storehouses of snow, the dome over the earth, the earth's immovable
character, and so on, might all be metaphorical. After all, we use such
language metaphorically today.

But our use of it is a hangover from a bygone era when that language was presumed to be literal.

And so the metaphorical approach seems to me to imply that the authors
of the Bible used language metaphorically which their contemporaries
would presume was meant literally. They did so without ever informing
their readers that they were using the language metaphorically. And so
they willfully deceived their initial readers, it seems.

Can someone explain to me why this viewpoint is preferable to one that
regards the Biblical authors to have assumed the truthfulness of the
cosmological knowledge of their era? Why is willful deception considered
more religiously appropriate than not knowing things that no one in
that time could know?

Originally posted at Exploring Our Matrix.