First 'book' that comes in mind is Esther ~  

**edit** seems to be one book in the bible that doesn't mention 'god'

Uuuhh, some of the Jesus stuff is pretty nice. Psalms and Proverbs have some good things to say. I couldn't remember what Esther was about, so I looked in my Bible and that didn't seem too bad. Um, I kind of like the book of Job because I like Job. Yahweh is as big a douchebag as he usually is though.

Edit: A whole page!?..............eh, how big are your pages? Lol.

There are some pages in Esther where the Jews don't do much harm (except being arrogant and declaring that they have their own law and won't follow the king's law, thus causing themselves problems). They do start start smiting people with swords around 9:5 though. They kill at least 800.

It is interesting that God isn't specifically mentioned for once.

This is all just for curiosity, mind you. Most Bible quotes are taken out of sections that are horrifying when the whole thing is read, or boring (just going on about how great God is with no point). The Bible heroes all seem to be murderers and assholes.

I was thinking about how stupid the book is and was wondering if there is an actual section you can read in which God seems nice without being an asshole.

New Testiment? Could you be more specific please? I remember most of Jesus bits as him going around purposefully doing things that fulfil the prophecies. He does nice stuff but says some shit stuff...

In Job God was an asshole...

My pages are pretty small, but so is the writing. It is an old KJV that I inherited from my Grandfather, two columns of writing to a page, looks pretty standard.

My sample size suggestion was arbitrary, maybe we should go by chapters.

... I just read a random page from Proverbs and I think it fits the bill (not that I really know what I am looking for, just curious)... Chapter 3 seems ok.

id have to agree 

I still think that the story of the Good Samaritan is a nice humanistic passage.
Jesus is teaching and a man asks what he must do to get into the kingdom of God.
Jesus asks if he follows the 10 commandments and the man says he has done since he was a boy.
Jesus is impressed and says that there are 2 more to add:
Love God and Love his Neighbour.

The man then asks who is his neighbour.
Jesus then tells the story of a business man who gets beaten half to death by robbers.
A priest passes, and quickly carries on before he gets attacked too.
A pharisee (another religious pharisee) does similar.
Then comes a Samaritan. (Jesus' audience gasps because the Samaritan non-Jewish - like a heathen or possibly even an atheist)
Jesus describes how the Samaritan takes time to care for the man and even spends money on hospital treatment.

He then finishes the story and asks his audience who the beaten man's neighbour was.
Nobody chooses the religious characters in the story.

Can't help himself in mark when he starts ranting about lakes of fire...

Having read the gospels repeatedly I can't help believing that jesus is fabricated. He has no true depth of character and his teachings are consistently erratic.

And just when you want to him to insist he's god he comes out with: "That is what you say."

It's not much of an effort from the son of the living god.

I didn't say he was perfect. After all, Gandhi was a racist but that doesn't mean he wasn't a prety cool guy.

By asking this question, you show that you did not read the bible.

That is not really a problem of course, but I think the best way to answer your question about finding a decent page is to read for yourself.

Now you are stuck with the personal opinions of all responders, who all have different ideas about ´decent´.

I think there is more decent in the Bible than people want to believe. You must put the bible in the context of the time when a specific part was written. Knowing that the books of the bible were written in a period of 1600 years, there is no such thing as ´the time when the bible was written´. Look how different our world is compared to 10 or 20 years ago.

Having said this, large parts of the bible are just history. Of course it is mixed wih religion, because that is the only reference and framework that existed in the country of which it tells the history.

It starts with the history of the earth and heaven - you may doubt the historicity of that part. However, its only the first few pages of the bible.

The rest of the book of genesis handles with the ´birth´ of the nation of Israel (=another name for Jacob, the grandson of Abraham). The next four books describe the exodus from Egypt, the travel through the desert and the giving of the law by Moses. You may not agree with these laws and commandments, but the stories in between are just historical - What happened and when did it happen and who was involved. Another era is described in Judges which is basically: This nation captured Israel for this many years and then a judge was born and freed the people of Israel. This happens a few times and then Israel wants to have a king. This is a new era and therefore a new book is started. First two books of Samuel describing the life of the first two kings, then two books of Kings, describing the history of the north and south parts of the country of Israel. After that there are two books of Chronicles which basically tell the same as Kings, but only for the south part. All these books just tell who was king and what did he do. Whether the king was religious or not does not say anything about the accuracy of the author. Persons, occasions and cities have often been verified by modern science.

After this history, there are some prophets included. You will probably not agree with what they say, but the author did a good job recording what he heard these ´messengers of god´ say.

The new testament starts with the life of Jesus and after that the actions of the apostles in the first 30 years after Jesus. Writers of these books could have been eye witness to the things that they describe. maybe the theological part is a bit old fashioned, but the authors just wrote down what they heard Jesus or the apostles say. Especially the book of Acts seems to be accurate, since there are several ´we´ passages with no reason to doubt that the author really was there.

Then a set of letters from apostle Paul to churches or persons appears. Modern day scientists do not doubt the authenticity of any of these letters as written by Paul, except for one - Hebrews.

In my opinion - whether or not accepting the theological part of the text - you should agree that the history of the Jews was recorded very accurately over the course of time. The books about which people have the most doubts are Genesis, Job, Psalms, the prophets and Revelation/Apocalypse. The rest actually seems quite okay.

Compare it with the history of your own country. How many decent pages will you find there if you exclude the ones with religious words?

Is largely dedicated to recounting the actions of an unprovable, undefinable god, it's hard to agree that so many books in the bible "actually seem quite ok".

There's a seam of impossibility running through all of them that can't be ignored regardless of whether or not historians generally agree that this is a very old delusion.

P.S. Good and balanced reply though - I especially admire use of the words "In my opinion".

i guess it depends on what you mean by "decent."  if you mean morally decent by our modern, mostly pacifistic standards then perhaps not.

if, however, you mean historically (as in textual and mythological history) or poetically "decent," then for a guy like me who studied three dead languages (latin and biblical hebrew and greek) as well as the whole history of judaism, christianity, and the ancient and classical mediterranean, then hell yes, i have to say this book kicks ass, just like homer, lucan, and moses cordovero all kick ass.  in a literary and philosophical sense, the bible a cornerstone of the development of human thought, and in this sense i have profound respect for it, especially the torah.

i just think it's wack-o to live by its every word, just like it would be wack-o to live by every word of hesiod or the laws of manu.

then again, can anyone think of any book whose every word you'd live by?

I have read the entire bible, and agree that instead of drawing you in it tends more to repel with one atrocity after another.

Always found it very interesting that though it is supposed to be the inspired word of God, an omniscient, omnipresent being...it reveals NOTHING that was not know by the people at the time it was written.  Did God have nothing more to share from his huge well of knowledge?  Nothing about germ theory?  Electricity? Geography? Astronomy?

Has been too long ago that we discovered the world wasn't flat.  And we only figured out that disease came from germs 150 years ago.

Isn't that a little suspicious?

fair enough.  i could take part in a two-day symposium on the disputed origins of the cult of the magna mater and its implications for the theory of the human unconscious and never once check my watch, while a single 45-minute biology lesson might very well put me to sleep.  i'm just poetically wired.  to each his own.

the history of the development of ancient texts and the history of the development of mythology.

i suppose, though when you talk about mythology it's a bit dangerous to try to put things in terms of "accuracy."  ancient people of almost every civilization held contradictory beliefs simultaneously, believing (quite wisely) that they didn't have the whole picture of the truth.  most ancient semites had no problem believing in yahweh and astarte at the same time.  in fact it was probably goddesses like astarte that later became embodied in kabbalistic concepts of the shekhinah.  homer, hesiod, appolodorus, and ovid all give us contradictory accounts of the creation of the world and the genealogy of the pantheon, and all four were held in reverence in the classical world, along with zarathustra and those "atheistic" neoplatonists like plotinus.