There aren't many Torah scholars who disagree with them. These aren't just some guys who studied a lot of Torah. In Orthodox Judaism, those three are like the three most important scholars of the Torah--like so much so that Rashi's commentary accompanies every page of the Talmud and is studied weekly at most synagogues and the other two are used as supporting scholars or to clarify points where Rashi doesn't go into much detail.
Maybe it's because I spent years as an Orthodox Jew and just take this knowledge for granted, but to say that there are scholars who disagree with Rashi is almost laughable.
Um, yes. That was kind of my point, lol. I even used the term anecdata. My point was that if a few people take it literally, that does not mean that most do. It doesn't mean anything. It means those people take it literally. When the majority of Jews and Christians view it as allegory and the most respected and deferred to Torah scholars take it as allegory, that actually means something.
I don't want to speak about "most Christian scholars" because I don't know. For the Judaism side, yes. Most Torah scholars take it as allegory. I know of only one big rabbi who took it literally and never actually met him, so I'm not sure how literally he took it. I do know that he was kind of considered a loon by the rest of the Orthodox community.
I'll point you to Rashi's commentary on Beresheit 1:1 (Gen. 1:1). He says that the Torah should have never even contained the book of Genesis, as it is technically supposed to be a book of laws. However, God chose to include a creation story so that:
"
hould the nations of the world say to Israel, 'You are robbers, for you have taken by force the lands of the Seven Nations,' they [Israel] will say to them: 'All the earth belongs to G-d. He created it and gave it to whomever He saw fit. It was His will to give it to them and it was His will to take it from them and give it to us.'"
He then goes on to say:
"At the beginning of the creation of heaven and earth, when the world was unformed and desolate, G-d said, 'Let there be light.' This verse does not intend to teach the sequence of creation -- that these were [created] first. For if that was the intention, it should have written, 'At first G-d created the heavens,' etc."
He then discusses how nowhere in the Torah does a literal sequence appear with the phrasing used in Gen. 1:1, indicating that we aren't supposed to read it as a literal sequence of events. He writes about it a few more times.
You can find the same interpretation in both Ramban and Ramban, though Ramban goes into the most depth, discussing why the account in Gen. is simply a glossing over because the early Israelites had no need for a deeper understanding. He goes into a LOT of detail about why the specific letters and words in these verses indicate this. It's pretty interesting, but I haven't been able to find an online version in English to link unfortunately.
This is a throwback to what Rashi is saying. We understand by our faith that God created the universe. We don't need to know how to believe this, hence the simplistic story in Genesis.
Doesn't mean we can't investigate now that we're ready to delve into those mysteries, but it does mean that we can announce our faith without that deeper knowledge.
Edit: I dunno why it's doing this weird slash through thing. I'm on my phone so I can't fix it.
. I know people who believe in a young earth and I have these conversations with them. I enjoy playing devils advocate now and again 🙂 
