Agree, without exaggeration it's the book that had the most impact on me.
> Brave New World
Read it when I was a teenager, I think I didn't get the point at the time.
> The Bible
I'm 100% atheist but I've considered reading the bible because it's culturally significant. But isn't just a bunch of boring and inconsistent tales? is there really anything to be learned from the bible?
The bible is not a single book; it's a collection of dozens of books written at very different times. Just reading it front-to-back is not a very productive way to read it. Genesis and Exodus are okay, but Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy are just dreadful.
The best place to start is the gospels, at the start of the NT. That gets you right to the heart of what Christianity is about, they're good stories, and there's quite a bit of wisdom in there. Absolutely worth reading.
If you want a philosophical treatise about the meaning of life, read Eclessiastes. The stories of David in the books of Samuel are exciting adventures as well as the most central part of the history of ancient Israel. It's also worth reading a couple of psalms (23 probably being the most famous) but if you read them all in one go, they might get a bit repetitive. And of course there's the erotic Song of Songs. For more adventure stories, Judges also has a couple of good ones.
I went to a school that taught ancient Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. With that came loads of bible passages to translate. Having grown up a non-believer (many people tried to literally "cure" that during my lifetime, I'm sure they'd be thrilled to know there is a simple drug I could take to make me normal) I can honestly say it's about what you'd expect from religious texts of those time periods. I found it less relatable than, say, Greek mythology.
What I found interesting is how many parts modern Christians habitually ignore, either because they'd be arrested if they'd follow them, or because those parts don't fit in with their personal beliefs. Of course, the entire corpus of text has also seen numerous redactions, in an effort to streamline it and make it more coherent (with mixed results).
Is it culturally significant? Honestly, I'm not sure. The Bible as an idea sure is, and certain famous passages are. But a given group's or individual's interpretation of it seems more informative, and that's often only losely based on those ancient texts.
Needless to say, I don't think there is anything in there to convince a non-believer of the existence of dieties, much less that one specific pantheon. And to be fair I don't think that's what the authors had in mind. It was probably intended as a shared folklore for groups that already strongly believe. Conversion, I suspect, comes through missionaries, not through the text.
The parts you describe are a history book. They are not meant to be normative to someone living in a modern Western Democratic context. They are background to explain a people, a time, and a discontinued form of government. Other more pertinent parts of the Bible (see the prophets or the epistles referring to The Law) make sense with that background available.
I also suspect there's some deeper truth buried in those laws about what happens if a community stays distinct, and how that can be enacted (clothing, food, calendar, etc.). And there's certainly a lot of history of the Hebrew people to describe what happens when distinction and noteriety happens, even through long periods of diaspora.
Finally, it's worth having some historical context. Considering the Israelites of the time to be unconscionable doesn't take into account what the typical society looked like in that time and place.
You could say the same thing about the Iliad or Aeneid, or the Arabian Nights, or pretty much any long-standing work of literature.
I'm not a Christian either, but I love the Bible - it's a book of great beauty and wisdom, and a foundation / moral guide for many of the world's great civilizations. If that isn't reason enough for you, then nothing will be.
"In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness."
Honestly, the Greek myths are better in that they weren't at least claiming those gods were omnibenevolent and stuff.
When I was learning Japanese, I was told this story:
Hashi : chopsticks, edge, bridge
A young monk was studying at a temple, inside the temple ground there was a garden with a bridge to an island. The senior monk told the student that he was to not cross the bridge"Hashi wa dame". Every day the young monk studies and meditated but he was not reaching enlightenment. One day, he crossed the bridge and meditated and had a vision on the island. He then share his vision with the other monks and the senior monk said to him "I told you not to cross the bridge" and the young monk replied "Master, I thought you were telling me not to walk on the edge, I went down the middle."
Both stories are very anti-establishment in nature and teach us that in order to get what we desire we may have to look for loopholes.
I blame the biblical literalism movement. I don't think there's anything else that has done quite as much damage to Christianity as the insistence that every part of the bible has to be taken as literally as possible. This movement is relatively recent; in the Middle Ages, bible scholars identified 4 levels of interpretation of the bible, of which the literal interpretation was only one, and generally the least important. After the Reformation, everybody had to be able to read the bible (generally a good thing), but that also meant everybody got to interpret it, and some people got a bit carried away.
Of course there are parts in the bible that do describe literal history, and those are still very important for context, but a lot of stories are very clearly not literal, and even in the middle ages, an important Christian thinker or cardinal (I forgot who it was and can't find the quote at the moment) said: if our interpretation of scripture conflicts with our observation of the world, then our interpretation must be wrong. He wasn't stoned or burned at the stake for that. And 2000 years ago, it certainly wasn't the Christians who were stoning people.
No, the "figurative interpretation", as you call it, has been with us for millennia. Biblical Literalism is only a fairly recent movement, and quite at odds with the bible, Christianity, and reality.
I suspect a non-trivial part of religion (that has been lost since we have broadly rejected it) is that it explicitly taught various types of humility, in various ways, and then also that from a more abstract/psychological perspective, the cognitive practice of conceptualizing an all powerful, all knowing God may have had beneficial psychological aspects with respect to moderating the (often dangerous) perception of omniscience, that seems to be an evolved and unavoidable consequence of human consciousness.
Evidence of this sense of omniscience can be seen everywhere on social media today: widespread self-perceptions of abilities to accurately read minds, predict the future, know everything (including the unknown/top-secret/undiscovered), solve infinitely complex problems with ease, etc. It's weird how this is so obvious, and makes complete logical sense, but encountering someone who does not outright and incredibly passionately reject this idea is incredibly rare. Perhaps this helps explain why religion is so common, always and everywhere - it is socially evolved and doggedly persistent, because it provides genuine superior fitness by offsetting some of the unseen negative aspects that hitched a ride on other evolved traits.
And, interpretations do not always have unanimous support for any given point in time. This kinda seems to apply to pretty much everything, not just The Bible.
Depending on what you mean by learn. If you are trying to understand Christianity, so might get a better idea but maybe not. From what I remember as a child going to church, each season would have a section of the bible that the pastor would pull from and there was not much variation on the theme from year to year. i.e. Easter being rebirth, pulling from Mathew, Mark and John.
But to say there is nothing to be learned is rather harsh, it does try and set out guiding principals and morals for people. From the old testament 10 commandments to the new testament "do unto others as you would have them do unto you". It has some nice poetry in it in places, it has some epic tales such as David and Goliath and it has some really crazy stuff such as Revelations.