Is the bible just a history book or is there more to it than that?

Are they all not just history books concluding to have some moral message to help us live our lives? Because if this is true, then life should be put first before religions. And nobody should take a life of a preacher or one dedicated in a path to understand religion. It’s secondary is it not?

Other respondents are responding to the OP’s use of “history” vs “story” (mythology). But OP’s question is, if the Bible is not divine, then one’s morality cannot derive from religion, but affirmation of life.

It’ll interest OP to know that there was a prominent theologian who came to pretty much that conclusion. This theologian pioneered Historical Jesus research, and came to the conclusion that the actual Jesus was all about the end of the world—and since the world has not ended, that Christianity was founded on a lie. (Subsequent Historical Jesus researchers have concluded that the end-of-the-world guy was John the Baptist, not Jesus, but that’s not the point here.)

So. You are a big time theologian, and you have just proven to yourself in your forties that everything you believed in is a lie. What do you do?

You switch jobs, study medicine, and go to Africa to heal the sick. “Life should be put first.” In fact, your personal philosophy Reverence for Life.

Ok, that’s one take on it, and I see that it’s not Wikipedia’s take on Albert Schweitzer: he articulated quite Christian motives for dropping theology and taking up medicine (and he didn’t really drop theology for that matter). But clearly he did not stay an orthodox Christian, and he had a crisis of faith after confronting the issue of literal truth in the New Testament.