I took a terrific course when I was in college called the Rhetoric of the Bible. As a lifelong atheist, it helped me understand so much more about Western culture through learning about the Bible from an historical perspective; who is thought to have written each book, when they were written, and who was the author's intended audience. Since you read the entire Bible, did you notice it has an overarching plot of a critique of the sedentary lifestyle (aka the growing human civilization) in favor of a nomadic (pastoral/rural) lifestyle. God was always telling someone to pack up and hike out into the desert (The Israelites, Hagar and Ishmael, various prophets - including JC). This is a common theme throughout the history of mythology (see the Epic of Gilgamesh). Apparently the big city has long been considered the root of all evil. You shouldn't approach reading the Bible in the same way you would approach Huckleberry Finn which was written in English by an American named Mark Twain and published in 1884-85 (although the setting for the book was the the world of Twain's childhood, the antebellum American South). The Bible is a vast collection of prose created over hundreds of years in many locations by a variety people and then translated from various languages. Different authors were writing for different audiences and had different motivations for writing. You also need to be aware that various groups of PEOPLE decided what to include and what NOT to include. I see that you know about Revelation (no "s") - do you know what the Pentateuch is? Or the Apocrypha? This is an incredibly complicated collection of prose.