Apologies for late reply
@Polymath257; I’ve been in short hermitage.
Though there is nothing wrong in wanting to analyse the composition of religious scripture and its historical context in order to reflect upon why it was put together in such and such way and what the motives of a religion could have been in so doing, if one is using Scripture for one’s spiritual understanding, reading it from cover to cover is not the best way.
Much like one does not read a law-book from cover to cover in order to understand the law, one also does not read the Bible from cover to cover to understand its spiritual meaning.
This is not (as
@ChristineM on here suggested) a question of “cherry-picking” from its content but rather, a matter of going to passages in Scripture that speak of whatever one is going through at a particular moment in time.
We are possibly all familiar with having read something somewhere that, at the time of us reading it, did not seem to speak to us in any real way, only to come across the same words at a different time in our lives and be surprised at our new understanding of what is being said.
Scripture works like that. Passages that at one time do not appear to relate to what we’re living, very much do so at others - and when they do, their “new” meaning (our new understanding, rather) is experienced in very profound, spiritual ways.
Humbly
Hermit