There is in fact, Gentlemen, no such thing as 'mere literature.'
Pedants have coined that contemptuous term to express a
figmentary concept of their own imagination or--to be more
accurate, an hallucination of wrath--having about as much
likeness to a _vera causa_ as had the doll which (if you
remember) Maggie Tulliver used to beat in the garret whenever,
poor child, the world went wrong with her somehow. The thoughts,
actions and passions of men became literature by the simple but
difficult process of being recorded in memorable speech; but in
that process neither the real thing recorded nor the author is
evacuated. _Belles lettres, Fine Art_ are odious terms, for which
no clean-thinking man has any use. There is no such thing in the
world as _belles lettres_; if there were, it would deserve the
name. As for _Fine Art,_ the late Professor Butcher bequeathed to
us a translation of Aristotle's "Poetics" with some admirable
appendixes--the whole entitled "Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and
Fine Art." Aristotle never in his life had a theory of Fine Art
as distinct from other art: nor (I wager) can you find in his
discovered works a word for any such thing. Now if Aristotle had
a concept of `fine' art as distinguished from other art, he was
man enough to find a name for it. His omission to do anything of
the sort speaks for itself.
So you should beware of any teacher who would treat the Bible or
any part of it as 'fine writing,' mere literature.