Ecclesiastes 9:5

[Belacqua]

Well, it is difficult to predict what God's message might be, but we can easily tell what it is not. Maybe it wouldn't be a book of useful instructions, but what we would expect it is not to contain blatantly wrong instructions. The Bible says, among things about preventing the spread of infectious diseases, not to touch a woman while she is having her period. That's obviously wrong now, but it would have probably seemed plausible to the people at that time. Similarly, Leviticus 14 says that some skin disease (whatever disease the Hebrew word "tsaraath" referred to) should be treated with bird's blood. That was obviously ineffective, but it would have probably seemed plausible to the people at that time. If the Bible were the God's word, we wouldn't expect it to be filled with what's simply incorrect empirical data.

I guess all of this comes down to what we assume God to be like. 

If we picture him as a Sky-Daddy who sits there knowing everything, in the way that a very smart person would know everything, then I agree that he really ought to help us out. 

Of course a lot of modern religious people conceive of God this way, but it doesn't make much sense to me. I don't know what's true (I seem to be the only one on the Internet who doesn't) but I lean toward a more classical view of theology, with help from Hegel and Blake on how things unfold through time. 

So if we prefer that non-Sky-Daddy view of things, then we wouldn't say that the Bible was dictated as True and Unchanging by an all-knowing and strangely unhelpful individual. I do think that the Bible is an extremely important book in history, but this is largely due to all the commentary that has come in response to it. Not to get all Roland Barthes on you, but the Bible, for 21st century people, is the written text plus all the interpretations that have come after. We simply can't read it the way they did centuries ago, and I'm not convinced that we should. (Original intentions are an interesting problem for historians, but not for people wanting to be better spiritually or morally.) 

I take seriously Blake's view, when he says that while the Bible is a founding document for our culture, any great book is an expression of God's word and deserves respect. His idea is that God is and acts through people (an old minority tradition in mystical Christianity) and that the sum of human knowledge (including math and science, as well as Homer and Shakespeare and Proust) is all the word of God. But you're right that it takes time for people to work things out, so there are bound to be sentences in the Bible which we shouldn't take as true, just as there are scientific theories which used to be popular but aren't any more. 

I do believe there are books and movies, etc., that make us stupider, and Blake would not include these among God's word.