One way to read the bible, is to read it as a civilization manual. The bible mentions among other things, all the symptoms of a society going to shit, widespread degeneracy, resulting in a civilization collapse. All the "don't do this", it's the symptoms I'm referring to It's been written, maintained, and conserved, in times when recreational literature (novels etc) didn't exist, because it was fucking hard to make a book, it was by hand no printing press evidently and not everybody was literate So it was a matter of survival to keep and maintain the religious texts, not mere past time and entertainment, evidently