Reddit mentions of The English Bible, King James Version: The Old Testament and The New Testament and The Apocrypha (First Edition) (Norton Critical Editions)

I like to recommend this reading plan for those who are completely new to the Bible.

It's organized into "days", but each one is like 5 minutes; you could easily knock it out in a single weekend.

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Versions:

King James' Version (often abbreviated KJV, though sometimes called the "Authorized Version" or AV) has had the largest cultural impact in the English Speaking world. It was the de facto Bible of the English-speaking world for the last 400 years. It's only really been the last hundred years that we've had (popular) competing translations.

If you're super-interested in the Bible and its impact on Western (and particularly English) literature and culture, there's a Norton Critical Edition that's highly recommended.

The KJV, though, is written in Early Modern English, which is mostly intelligible to speakers of Modern English (me and you), but is not completely. Some words have changed meaning so as to be incomprehensible—or worse, to give some alternate (occasionally opposite!) meaning than what was intended in 1611. So I don't really recommend it to people looking to understand the work so much as to appreciate its beauty.

Among modern translations, the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) is the academic standard used in most colleges (be they secular or religious). The New American Standard Bible plays a similar role in conservative academia. Either is great.

The NRSV is a little more "dynamic" and the NASB a little more "formal" in its translation—that is, the NRSV might translate idioms into a similar meaning or their intended meanings. The NASB might just keep the original words, even though their cultural meaning is nil.

There are other modern translations of varying quality. The NIV or CEV are probably fine, for example (although I think the CEV is targeted at a pretty low reading level). All Bibles have problems, though, so don't stress over getting the perfect version.

(One example of formal equivalence in the KJV is the phrase "one that pisseth against a wall"—it's just an idiom for "a man", not trying to say something about actually peeing on things. Almost everyone else just translates this as "a man").

"Catholic" Bibles have a few extra books, and some of their books are longer in parts (there's an extra prayer at the end of Esther, for example. The Protestant version of the book is actually quite irreligious).

Protestants have long held that the books they removed were still books worthy of reading and study, though many don't today. So they might be worth looking into.

The other thing to know is that it's many books, compiled into (usually) a single volume. You don't have to read it from back to front. It's not organized chronologically (except in parts). The majority of the organization is by genre and then by author and length.

The chapter and verse numbers are modern inventions. It started out as writings meant to be read aloud in church. It was written mostly in Hebrew (the Old Testament—events from Creation, then following Abraham and his descendants, Israel) and Greek (the New Testament—from the events of Jesus' life and death and the next 70 or so years of the Church's history). There's bits of Aramaic in parts, too (another language of the region, similar to Hebrew).

You might want to consider a one-volume Bible commentary. It's more expensive (and the book would be much larger), but if you pair it with your normal reading Bible it could be more beneficial in the long run. The New HarperCollins and the Oxford Bible Commentary are both good for standard historical-critical Bible study. I think the Oxford consistently goes more in depth than the HarperCollins, but you can actually carry the HarperCollins around without spraining a muscle. They do sell sections of the Oxford Bible Commentary seperately (Gospels, Pentateuch, etc.), but then we're stretching the whole point of a "study Bible."

Also, the two-volume Norton Critical English Bible: KJV is just the bee's knees. It studies the literary tropes in the Biblical narrative and traces the KJV's influence on English literature. I'd say it's the most unique study Bible on the market today.

But as a starter, you can't go wrong with the New Oxford Annotated.

You might try

• Joseph Campbell's Power of Myth
  
• Joseph Campbell's Hero With a Thousand Faces
  
• this Carl Jung Reader is pretty good
  
  Technically these deal with mythology, but they're sufficiently enlightening on the meaning of myth symbolic myth content to serve you for literature.
  
  One other thing worth reading: the Bible. Particularly a literary Bible like this or this.
  
  Much of the symbolism in literature hearkens back to religion or mythology (which is just old religion). So it's never a bad idea to study the most read religions in their own right. Snake, Apple, Water, Flood, Rain, Fire, Smoke. These are all fairly omnipresent symbols with a wealth of genesis in books like the Bible.

Hmm. I don't know if there's such a thing as a one-volume "theological study Bible" marketed to the masses. What comes most readily to mind are the Reformation Study Bible, the Catholic Lectio Divina NRSV, and the Orthodox Study Bible, which mix insights from various saints/theologians with devotional notes.

For multivolume commentaries there's the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture series that gathers excerpts from patristic writers, and a Reformation Commentary series that does the same for the Reformers. There's also a "Church's Bible" series that gathers patristic commentaries.

There is also a really neat two volume annotated KJV published by Norton that examines the Bible (and the KJV translation's) qualities as literature and its legacy in English literature.