The Bible is only a collection of books. Some of them or no more than some letters sent back and forth between religious leaders like Paul to the Corinthians. You could study the Bible in many different ways. In history class we studied the Quoran/Koran (Spell). You can look at it as a literary form, you can look at it from a historical perspective, you can look at it as a way to study Christians and even Islamic people. Abraham was the father of both the Jews and Islamic people who claim Abraham was a prophet and the Father of many people.
When I look at history, the Bible and the study of the Bible People covers an awful lot of ground from King Xerxes to Egyptians, to Syrians, to Babylon, symerians, greeks, romans, etc. In history people are affected by what they believed or their leaders believed. So a study of religious texts can be somewhat useful.
On the other hand the Bible is awful large to get through in a year. That is an awful lot of information to get through. Just looking at selected sections you could get a pretty good overview.
It is just a book. It doesnt bite. If you can force a religious person to take a class in evolution then maybe everyone should have to take a couple religion courses. Turnaround is fair play.
What harm is there in reading a book?
I would consider the Bible to be an adult only book. It is full of murder, and who slept with who and who begat who. Clinton compared himself to King David. How can you understand what he is talking about if you never read it?
The Bible would make a very difficult book to study. The context it was written in makes some of the sayings in the bible hard to understand. For instance there is this saying Christ says that goes like this "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of the needle than for a rich man to get to Heaven" (Paraprhased). The eye of the needle refers to a gate in the wall of jerusalem just tall enough for a person to walk through. The point is the camel had to be unloaded, the goods carried to the other side, and then the camel has to kneel and crawl through the eye of the needle. You cant just read the Bible and know what the heck the saying means. You have to have the historical perspective to understand what it means. All of this is just the information in one little verse. Imagine now that you need to read 1,500 pages of that in tiny text. It might be closer to 2,000 pages, I am just guessing. It depends on the foot notes and the size of the text.
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