If for only by it's following it's facinating . So many empires fell, Charlamane ,Alexander the Great,Montey Pithon...and Christianity grows.

A book of stories. fables

A place holder on my bookshelf right next to a full concordance of the bible

The Goat Herder's Guide to the Galaxy

It is a useful reference work. It is good to quote at Christians to point out the fallacy of their belief.
I was brought up in a strict Irish catholic household, my folks were always at church, but I can't ever recall them reading scripture. In my experience, Catholics don't read the bible at all, just rely on the B.S from the clergy.

By design, a tool of control, and like so many tools, most dangerous when poorly used.

Rolling papers

A flawed history which can be eye-opening about the conditions of the un-educated human mind in the years up to the birth of christ. Thoroughly unreliable in its creation myth, accounts of miracles, and seemingly psychotic prophets.

The Bible is just a collection of texts, put together over 300 years after Jesus was supposed to have lived. A had full of clergy picked and chose what they wanted in it. And for that matter, which versions of the stories to use. Even after that, various chapters don't agree with each other. God didn't make man. Man made God. Humans invented the concept of God, and cobbled together various stories to fill it out. And stole a bunch of it from the previous religion of Judaism. (From the Christian point of view.)

The Gospels are great Literature, Revelations could well be taken as a 1967 LSD trip. Paul's letters could make up the content for a new soap opera. The Song of Solomon beautiful poetry and some excellent action film material from the histories. Technical manuals in Leviticus and some really wild shorts along the way with Noah, Abraham and a freedom fighter that seems to be the star of the whole collection. The mistake is to take it seriously and literally. A rival to the Star Wars tri-triology, complete with heroes, anti-heroes, family secrets and conflicts and ultimately mission with a complicated end story. Similarly with the Mahabharata and Ramayana; epic stories to keep one amused for months, possibly years. Its up there with The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Road To Wigan Pier, Midnight's Children and The Canterbury Tales. As with all literature take from it what resonates and leave the rest. Then come back with more life experience and you are reading a different book. You are now letting the book read you!

The bible to me is a book written by men to control women of how she should live. i would definately not say the bible is 100 percent bad . The bible consist of old and new testament. i find the old testament non-sense since there is hatry towards a woman. but in the new testament, a man named jesus saved magdalene from being stoned to death. i think jesus is the only man from the bible who treat a woman with respect. therefore i respect him . I would not consider that he is alive since he dead 2000 years ago. however i do respect him in conclusion the bible to me is for 90 percent non-sense and 10 percent senseful.

A doorstop.

Pornographic in spots, full of hate/torture/murder & incest, plus a gawd who creates & destroys for no reason whatsoever except "jealousy".....

It's a very good book to help us understand how we got to where we are today.

A book of short stories combined at some point from verbal legends and earlier tales into a collection that rulers over time found they could use to their advantage to sublimate many natural human tendencies.

Historically it seems that it was the spoken word not written down for many centuries but passed on so I guess if I know anyhting about humans at all there were bits added and subtracted from the story - I read somewhere that the Emperor constantine had a very troublesome populace who were believing all sorts of things and arguing a lot so to get them peaceful he got it written down - I think that is probably why it makes very little sense to me and I was much more inot reading Tom sawyer and huck Finn Anne of Green Gables etc much better narrated stories.

A dusty old book on the shelf that barely had any meaning for me as a child, also Catholic, but ceased to have any meaning at all many years ago.

I've also come to a sort of conclusion that the ancients, not having TV or books (for the most part) used the spoken word for entertainment, therefore story tellers were popular people to have around. The Bible is a collection of those stories, a sort of written record of the TV soaps of thier day and like the soaps of today, not to be taken very seriously

The bible is a decoration to keep my family and friends happy since still believe the dogma. If wasn't for that I would thrown it the trash when I became an atheist.

It's a badly-edited collection of bronze age stories, useful now only as examples of how primitive people thought. The books that were selected for inclusion by the Romans were those deemed useful when they invented xtianity in the 4th century.

It’s an interesting enough historical text full of delightfully ridiculous allegories.

First is not a book, but a collection of books, a portion of them Judaic and another portion Judaic Christian. As any ancient book, is a collection of poetry, allegory, myth, legends, history based more on propaganda than historical analysis. It should have the same level of respect like any ancient book, as the Book of the Dead (Egyptians), Homer The Illiad or Odyssey (Ancient Greece), The Upanishads or Vega (Ancient Hinduism), etc. So I like reading the Bible, and I respect the Bible as I respect other ancient Books, because they were attempts by early Human Civilizations to make sense of the world, humanity and the meaning of life. What I do not respect is to grant superior status to all other ancient books and philosophies and religions, all attempts by all humans to make sense of life, death and the meaning of living in this universe.
This video summarizes what the Bible is:

The Bible to me is a poorly written collection of stories, poetry, and rules for ancient peoples. It was written about 1500 BCE by different authors it has been shuffled,translated, copied and recopied changed and retranslated . During this books were lost. Some stories were taken from other people.
The gods El and Baal were from Egypt and the Book of the Dead. Noah was taken from Babylon, other stories like Moses appear to come from ancient Persians.
My reading of the Bible lead to my deconversion.

The christian bible is nothing to me. i have not read it and cannot comment on its contents, other than that what little i have seen seems inconsistent and, well, rather a reversion to paganism from its presumed origin, judaism. as an entity, setting aside its contents, it is, i am aware, a patched-together, much edited, much censored, much tweaked collection of forgeries, purporting to be about a guy who (if he even ever lived) had been dead about 60 years by the time any of its purported authors began to write about him. if he existed, he was jewish, and those purported authors god pretty much everything wrong about him, and emperors, popes and kings not only selected which writings should be included and heavily changed the writings for their own political purposes, but retroactively reinterpreted the jewish bible (without understanding a damned thing about judaism) to fit in with their version of the christian one.

the jewish bible is a collection of writings, by humans, that range from creation mythology (talking serpent, interesting!) to genealogical records (all those begattings -- they're so boring, they HAVE to have some basis in reality; there could be no other logical reason for their inclusion!) to fabulist tales which may or may not have some basis in reality. was there a king david? i like to think so. i like harps. i like imperfect people. he is certainly drawn as imperfect. i don't get how, within his story, modern folks interpret the bits about onan as life instructions, but there you have it: a book written by committee is going to have major flaws.

i can't figure out why the science channel and the history channel spend so much time trying to explain the bible (and they don't really define "THE" bible). they may as well try to explain harry potter (i wouldn't watch that either, but it would make as much sense).

i've read shorter novels and better written ones, and more interesting ones, but i've read worse as well. no one founded a religion on most of my reading list, and that certainly does set the bible apart.

g

First, to me, the Bible is a collection of parables, full of lessons for the readers are supposes learn from(but don't)
Second, to me, the word of God? If that's the case, man is doing a piss poor job of learning from God.
Third, the age of the Book(Old Testament) based on historical accounts, is less than 3000 Years old, so to me, that basically rules out the notion that it is the "Word of God".
4th: In terms of who wrote it, I've heard from priests and pastors, that it was "written by God"....not likely. I subscribe to the notion that it was written by men who considered themselves to be "Godly"...not "God". But then, the notion of what is a "Godly Man" has always been evolutionary in nature....never constant.
Finally, sadly speaking, certain sects of Today's society have used the Bible to justify "Hate" and codify "Hate'....making those who invoke the Bible by using it to justify hateful acts, as "UnGodly".

A coaster or doorstop ?