Which Bible stories are re-telling of mythology, myths and fairy tales of other cultures?

In the case of the NT that is exactly what happened. The time frame in which the NT was written was the time and place where these events took place. The people who read the accounts as well as the epistles of John, Peter and Paul were the people who knew these men, and had witnessed the events written about.

Let me give you two examples that you might be able to relate to, depending on how old you are. 911 happened September 11, 2001, almost eleven years ago. There are plenty of people still around who were eyewitnesses, and we still listen to their stories. In eleven years, how much of the story has been modified to include implausable details? Has there been any mythological god stories that have arisen from that event in the past 10.5 years? Unexplained stories of miracles? Crazy, unbelievable details? I think that we would agree that the stories have not been modified to include supernatual details.

The Detroit riot broke out July 23, 1967. I was a girl then, and my mother heard it on the radio and started crying. But I wasn't that interested in it. However since then, I have had plenty of opportunities to learn about that riot from friends and others who were eyewitnesses to it. That was 45 years ago. I've been driven around the neighborhoods that were affected, and talked to people who were helping their neighbors get their stuff out of their houses before they burned to the ground--I could keep going. The point I am trying to make is that 45 years later, eyewitnesses are still around, old newpaper accounts are still available, and no one is inventing supernatuaral details to the event that occurred 45 years ago.

Taken in the same time frame, the NT authors wrote roughly between 50 CE to 90 CE. The events that they wrote about occurred around 32 CE. Before the events were written, these men travelled extensively reporting their accounts, and creating new events that were reported in Acts and the epistles. There was a rough twenty years between the time that these events happened and when they were written down and read by people who lived in Palestine at that time. What skeptics would have us believe, is that within a twenty year time-frame, these silly superstitious people --an entire population, by the way, were so gullible that they couldn't remember what really happened, and instead swallowed some fish-tale about a man-god, that who really didn't exist. I submit to you that the versions of invented tales (and there are so many differerent theories) is much more unlikely than the simple fact that these accounts were accepted and protected as truth, simply because eyewitnesses saw these events for themselves and knew them to be true.

Moses wrote Genesis by inspiration of God. It was believed and preserved because of the miraculous signs given as a witness to the Israelites in the desert. The Prophets were also written down by the men whose names are given to them, with the exception of the end of 2 Samuel. That means that the men who exhorted the kings of Israel and Judah in regards to upcoming punishment were speaking to the people of these nations, and they were preserved because the events in these accounts took place exactly as prophesied.

You can argue with me. I actually like it. I was actually a contrary little kid. The first time I took a bible apologetics class I was hooked. Everyone else at church had moved on, but I was still buying books. And every once in awhile I get an argument I haven't heard before, so I have to do some digging and it increases my knowledge.

If the bible is not inerrant, then I have no reason for hope. If any part of it is a lie, then who am I do figure out what is a lie and what is the truth? It all claims to be true. Why should I believe that God will forgive me, if I can't believe that God sent Jonah to Ninevah to preach the gospel of forgiveness to the pagans in that city?

The reason that I take the three stories you mention as literal, is because their validity was stated by Jesus. That is, the resurrection of Jesus, along with His claims of Divinity is sufficient evidence to conclude that He was God. That being the case, God Himself testified that the three accounts you asked me about are true.(Jonah, Adam and Noah)

Matthew 12:40
For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

Luke 3:38
the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.

Mark 10:4-9
4 They said, “ Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and [a]send her away.” 5 But Jesus said to them, “[b] Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. 6 But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. 7 For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother[c], 8 and the two shall become one flesh; so they are no longer two, but one flesh. 9 What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.”

Luke 17:26-28
26 “Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. 27 People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all.
28 “It was the same in the days of Lot. People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building.