The story of Job is nothing but allegory, but for me it illustrates an important point. If a person is deeply in awe of nature, is appreciative and enrapt by reverence, then no amount of bodily suffering can lessen that reverence. Bodily suffering was in a minor subcategory in Job’s world view—just part of the natural course of events and of little significance.

I like Paul writing to the Corithians: "When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child But when I became a man, I cast away childish things." I just include religion among those "childish things".

Let you judge for yourself

"be not as the hypocrites who pray in public."

I think jesus was right on that point

Proverbs and Ecclesiastes are pretty good.

                                                                                                            Genesis:  The Parable of the Trees has an allegorical relevance to what has happened in history repeatedly.  Namely the weeds sometimes leading to burning everything else down.  Also the Sermon on the Plain  has rlevance to compassion.  As I have dug into scripture I have discovered there are allegorical interpretations that are more beautiful ans interresting than the literal interpretations.  I am intrigued by the "hidden" or mystical interpretations as well.  All Abrahamic religions have these three levels f understanding;  literal, allefgorical, and hidden.  These have caused major splits and conflicts, but remain relevant.  These more esotric interpretations fit more easily wirh my scientific background as well.

Ecclesiates - All is vanity.
Jesus - The one that you were taught maybe.
The bible is literature & not sacred scripture. Not to be taken seriously.

All of it is interesting and good..so long as you can understand it in the context of which the original texts were conceived. Don't think of it in religious terms. Once dogma entered the picture the original purpose of the texts were lost.

First off I don't think that there are any holy books. Unless we can consider some of the literary masterpieces holy, or the ancient hand-lettered and illustrated works of art holy. Some of those I'd give a holy label just for being irreplaceable. Religious books because they're religious? No.
I'm not really that certain that Jesus existed. The bible being holy? Meh. Palm reading
My 2 cts..

Well, although I don't take the Bible too seriously, the 10 Commandments aren't bad guidelines for life.

The future is in our hands but not written in our hands. The bible is not a good book. It could be if you were stranded and had no toilet paper.

I like "Song of Songs", a whole lot of erotic sensual love and not much god stuff.

The bible is a vile book. It is full of murder, rape, and slavery. Jesus was not a good bloke, he was for slavery. Jesus wanted to divide people's families.

There is a lot of smutty stuff....Abraham pimping out Sarah(several times), Lot & his daughters, etc etc....also gory stuff, like a head on a platter, lots of massacres, and a major mass drowning. But I think Netflix does it better, plus I don't have to wade through a bunch of "begats"....put that book Down, man!

Your initial obser vation is all too true. Many, many topics are more worthy of discussion.

I actually thought the book of Ruth was a good read. The story was entertaining.

we don't stray from the topic of religion. it's not straying. it is a site designed for us to speak of many things, not just religion. do atheists and agnostics have to discuss religion all day and all night? what a bore that would be! i certainly have not dedicated my life to not believing in any gods. there aren't any gods. so... i can't think about anything else, ever?

as for what parts of a holy book are interesting, what is a holy book? i don't accept the concept of holiness. are you talking about bibles and such? i rather like king david. he is wonderfully imperfect. i don't take anything in it to be holy or sacred, though.

i don't know the christian bible, though. i've never been christian.

g

imo the Bible is not holy, or at least does not profess to be anywhere. I know a guy on the hands thing, you might be interested, [biblenews1.com]

I was reading 3 times that book and tried studying it with some others, none made sense enough to warrant me to keep beating my head about it. It ended a marraige and she died in it.
The future is in hand if we live another day...

The whole book is interesting. As long as you look at it as just a book, not a collection of religious texts. The Old Testament gives a good view of how a group of early men created answers to the questions they had none for and many sound insights into how the human mind works. They didn't consciously know they were doing the psychological study part since they couldn't see they were creating their version of God with all of the hatred and prejudices they carried in their minds though they may have known how dead on their descriptions of how we behave toward one another are. As to the New Testament the complete about face from the "an eye for an eye" philosophy for one of "turn the other cheek" and submission to higher authority is almost too great to accept, making one wonder if the claims of the stories of Jesus actually being the creation of the Flavian emperors. The observations of the writers are generally sound, it's their adding the supernatural connotation that takes things astray.

Firstly, I do not accept any book as being "holy;" but this does not mean we cannot find any words of wisdom or kindness in any of them. That said, they don't have any more wisdom, compassion, etc. than many secular writings.

About Jesus: yes, the bible has stories of his kindness, but he could also be a jerk. After all, he did believe in hell and he compared the Canaanite woman to a dog. Jesus is like the rest of the bible--you can pick out what you like and throw out the rest.