That is an odd thing to say. I've read the bible and don't believe I am cruel and immoral. If people read it and go on being good its not because of the bible, it's dispite it.
Yet I've gained much from the Bible, and I do not consider myself cruel, though whether or not I'm moral is not for me to decide.
There's still murder and rape in the western world as well as other places. By your logic there must be nothing wrong about murder and rape because they 'withstood the test of time'.
You're applying this kind of logic to something wholly unrelated. Literature and acts are not the same thing, and the same mode of thinking should not be applied to them.
The logic I demonstrated ONLY refers to the Tanakh, and nothing else. If I were talking about murder and rape, I would have mentioned murder and rape.
Besides, you haven't really demonstrated at all how the Tanakh promotes these things; you just say it does because of what you see on the surface and based on modern western culture. (Which couldn't be more inappropriate.) You've forgotten to look at the subsequent culture, and the Jewish version of the Golden Rule, which was somehow (though I'm not sure how just yet) used as a summery of the Torah.
Surely the Rabbi who said it read the Torah every day, and knew its contents inside out; yet he still managed to come to this conclusion that its main message is: "That which is detestable to you, do not do to others." I do not see it just yet, but I haven't really studied the Torah, so I will not say that it's not there.