You can disregard all of the superstitious beliefs people derive from it and still see it for the epic from history that it is.

That's like trying to learn about London by reading Harry Potter.
No you can't, because nothing in the Bible is trustworthy, the Bible is not a historically accurate document.

There is no platform 9 3/4 in the Kings Cross railway station, despite the clear description of it in Harry Potter, and in the exact same way the historical descriptions of the bible are highly unreliable. So any truth value has to be determined from other sources than the bible. Which means the bible is irrelevant even detrimental for such studies.

You can read the bible as a book of fiction nothing more.