God creates the world in two different ways. Then he gets pissed at the people living in it and wants to kill them all. But Noah is cool so he and his family gets to live. Then he sends a butt load of prophets to the Israelites to get them to behave like he expect them to. That doesn’t work, so he goes down to impregnate a girl with himself, so he can experience what all the fuzz is about and realizes life is hard and sucks and then wants to forgive all the misdoings of all people instead. But only if they believe in him. If not they get burned in the end of time. The end.

I mean, the simple of it is: God created the universe and it culminated in humanity; humanity decided they could do a better job of being God than God. They did not. God is born as a human (Jesus) in order to re-orient humanity. Humanity, particularly those with wealth and power, reacts quite strongly to this critique and Jesus is killed. But He comes back from the dead as a way to show us that even our worst actions aren't bad enough to stop God from loving and forgiving us. So then Jesus leaves us to try things again. He tells us that He'll come back one day to see how we did. A couple of His followers write a bunch of stuff telling us how we can live in such a way as how God intended. In true character, we continue to not listen. But we can take solace in the idea that Jesus has promised that His return will involve Him sorting things out in the event that we never get our act together.

You're a bit incorrect in your assessment of the different versions. It's not so much about different "takes" as it is different methods of translating a collection of texts. In the same way that you can find different versions of The Odyssey you find different versions of the Bible. And those translations often exist for different purposes (some are more geared toward study while others are better suited for use in liturgy). Other than the KJV-only weirdos, there's not really belief that a single translation is more "definitive" than another. Some might feel that their preferred one hews closer to what they think is a more accurate translation, but I've not encountered too many people who feel that other translations are "wrong" or whatever. And none of the different versions are going to differ on "what transpired." Where you'll find those kinds of differences are when comparing, say, Jewish readings of the Old Testament versus Christian ones (for obvious reasons).

A book that I recommend to folks when it comes to the Bible is Jason Boyett's Pocket Guide to the Bible. It's very funny and a good introduction. Rachel Held Evans' Inspired is also a worthwhile read, but maybe more for folks who've been exposed to the Bible a bit (and also for those who might've been burned by the church).

EDIT: I have to laugh at myself for beginning this with "the simple of it." Also, I think the bigger challenge in getting that overarching narrative has a lot to do with the fact that the Bible is basically a library of books collected into a single volume. It's a whole lot of different genres, ranging from mythology and history to fiction and poetry (including a deeply misunderstood genre known as "apocalyptic writing").