>>17915706 (OP)
what
>>17916756 says, but to expand on it even further.
The bible is a not a single work, it's a collection of texts written by countless people over thousands of years.
Genesis rips largely from ancient Babylonian texts, it pretty openly acknowledges the existence of other gods, because it was written by polytheists.
Exodus also accepts the existence of the Egyptian gods, but simply asserts that their own god is stronger.
The next few books are dedicated to laws detailing stoning and sacrificing animals. It's not a parable, it's just a law text, written during a time when stoning and animal sacrifice was what people believed in.
Then there's the whole historical section with the psalms clumsily placed in the middle of it, likely because it's the most well read part of the bible so it's convenient to have it in the middle of the book so it looks nice when put on a table.
The end of the old testament and the start of the new testament is separated by a 500 or so year gap wherein suddenly the jews are using a bunch of Platonic ideas in their religion, and animal sacrifice is just quietly ignored without ever really acknowledging it.
It's not magical, there's no deeper meanings to 99% of it, it's written the way it's written because it was kept as an oral tradition for most of its history so it had to be easy to remember. It's also old so even when it's translated into modern languages they want to preserve the spirit of the original, giving it an antiquated style. This makes it very vague and easy to take out of context.
Read the bible cover to cover, it's not that long, it's just a book.
