Originally Posted by Fluffmeister

Some obvious examples would be Jesus' use of parables. When he tells Peter "I will make you a fisher of men", he's not literally talking about catching human beings in nets.

The Old Testament is full of allegory - Isaiah refers to Israel as a vineyard, but it's meant allegorically, and the idea of building a highway in the desert didn't refer to physical road-building.

The Genesis account of creation in six days may also have been intended allegorically - since a "day" is defined by the time from sunset to sunset, and the Sun didn't get created until the fourth day - and elsewhere, it's mentioned that a "day" from God's viewpoint is like "a thousand years" to us (and the word for thousand, אלף, also means "multitude" in Hebrew).