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Desrtopa comments on Should we have secular churches? - Less Wrong
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Personally, I turned to the bible after becoming acquainted with several other strains of mythology, and with the intention of treating it in the same manner, but I found myself intensely disappointed by its literary qualities. There were plenty of other writing flaws, but I felt like the core of it was that monotheism simply doesn't make for as good story dynamics.
Please remember that what you read is a hatchet job of translation. The original is poetry, and it was poorly translated. I find myself quoting from the bible much less in English, for that reason. (I think a lot of biblical quotations are often appropriate: e.g., when I'm frustrated with something obviously petty, I use the Jonah quotation of "Better I die than live", because it's got the exact self-awareness that I need)
When I read Bible verses in English, I often suffer almost physical pain at the awkwardness. At "Song of Solomon", this increases to actual physical symptoms, after which I closed it and never tried SoS in English again...
I suggest that there never was any "original," even in Hebrew. Rather, there were many contradictory oral, and later, written fragments, later amalgamated and integrated into a canon that no doubt continued to change even after it claimed to be unchangeable.
As I understand it, the King James Bible is a rotten translation (it's admittedly a translation of a translation). However, at least according to The Story of English, it was composed "so that it would not only read better but sound better." I suggest that, within the context of English-speaking culture, it was a success -- and it has itself become canonical.
I might have found it more aesthetically pleasing in the original Hebrew, but I had more complaints about the content than the prose.