If the Bible was held as an excitingly strange book of myth as we now see Homer or Sophocles I wouldn’t have a problem with picking up a copy and just enjoying it as a piece of literature past and all (in fact this is how I see most religious films and I get a lot enjoyment out of them generally).
But as a guide book on how to run a modern society (which it is often seen as) I am less generous with it or the devotees that use it in this way.
People are very protective of scripture of all kinds because a large sway of the religious communities that use them see them as the unalterable and true testament of God or the Gods. It has a weight for them of being even higher than a scientific treaties or a political manifesto and as such is used to restrict the freedoms of people who don’t and will never believe this to be true.
So it’s fair to contextualise the time in which it was written, what then benefits of the rituals once were and how it’s highly probably not literally true just to counter the toxic effect of people who do fall for the whole shabang. And I would include scriptures of all kinds there including the oldest Hindu Veda to the most modern alien exorcism pamphlet from Church of BadScienceFictonology.org.