something that always bugged me about the Bible is how little it resembled religious texts i found to be more profoundly meaningful and universal in scope. like the Tao te Ching, Upanishads, etc. i was expecting for the Word of God to more closely resemble a philosophical work of general wisdom and insights,more outisde of historical or cultural contexts.
but what i've come to understand is that the Bible is essentially God in human history. and as such records the good, the bad, and the ugly of human nature. it records God's hand in creation, His creating the first humans, and the first several generation of human life on earth. it records God's wilful, stern, forgiving, and just hand at work in human society, in response to sin, righteousness, the need for second chances, and the promise of eventual reconciliation between man and God.
the Bible doesn't tend to meditate on God as an abstract or philisophically approachable Being, but records His hand at work in human lives and societies as a wilful, powerful, and knowable Someone. it's not a philisophical, advaitic kind of text, as i expected. but it is remarkably thorough, and still relevant and meaningful today.