PART 1 of 3

To begin this response, I want to mention that there are two Reddit communities that are well suited for discussion about approaching the Bible from a scholarly or academic standpoint, viz., r/AcademicBiblical and r/AskBibleScholars. Nevertheless, I shall still provide a comprehensive answer here to help the more general audience of r/AskHistorians.

Indeed, knowledge of the world in which the Bible developed is important for gaining a sense of the various stories it contains as well as some of its more esoteric passages. To a certain extent, every individual who examines the Bible is separated from the text in several ways, including time, place, culture, genre, language, etc. Alas, sometimes even after bridging some of those gaps more than a few of the esoteric passages will remain just that: esoteric.

To answer your questions, there are different types of tools that will help one read the Bible in its literary, historical, and sociocultural context. I shall describe these categories in an increasing order of complexity over multiple comments, due to length limitations within Reddit. All links to various works are to the corresponding entry in Google Books unless otherwise indicated.

Study Bibles

Your baseline aid to understanding the Bible is possession of one or more study Bibles. These are Bibles that contain the full biblical text as well as an apparatus with annotated notes, introduction to the biblical books or genres under discussion, and long-form essays either situated with the front matter, collected in an appendix, or located in a contextually sensible place within the Bible proper. These supplementary materials are written by biblical scholars who have expertise with the biblical books or topics at hand, and the overall enterprise is superintended by one or more biblical scholars who function in an editorial capacity.

The major limitation with respect to study Bibles is a lack of space: the biblical scholar has to make difficult decisions as to what to include, so often commentary or annotations for a particular verse or group of verses, called a pericope, may be sparse or lacking. (This is where more detailed, dedicated resources shine.)

There are several categories of study Bibles: those with a devotional focus, those that are geared for a certain demographic (children, seniors, et al.), those that have sectarian notes, etc. The three study Bibles I will suggest are scholarly in nature and do not represent the views of any given religious group or denomination, nor will you find them to be "preachy" or aligned with some sort of theological viewpoint. Furthermore, each uses the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV, 1989-1990) as the base text and includes all the biblical books from all the canons of Scripture: the Hebrew Bible (also known as the Old Testament), the Deuterocanonicals (also known as the Apocrypha), and the New Testament. Note that the NRSV serves as a sort of de facto standard for modern English translations among biblical scholars and was designed to be as inclusive as possible with respect to the aforesaid biblical canons and gender-inclusive language.

To learn more about the NRSV translation, see Bruce M. Metzger, Robert C. Dentan, and Walter J. Harrelson, The Making of the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1991). LINK For more information about translations in general, see Bruce M. Metzger, The Bible in Translation: Ancient and English Versions (Grand Rapids, Baker Academic, 2001). LINK

Here are the suggested study Bibles:

• Attridge, Harold W., and Wayne A. Meeks, eds. The HarperCollins Study Bible. Rev. ed. New York: HarperOne, 2006. Contains study notes from scholars who are members of the Society of Biblical Literature and includes archaeological data, comparisons of the biblical texts with contemporary writings, explanatory notes, etc. LINK
• Coogan, Michael D., ed. The New Oxford Annotated Bible. 5th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Includes contributors from diverse backgrounds and critical / literary approaches to the biblical text, presents issues where scholarly consensus exists and provides alternative approaches where such consensus is lacking. LINK
• DeYoung, Curtiss Paul, Wilda C. Gafney, Leticia Guardiola-Sáenz, George E. Tinker, and Frank M. Yamada, eds. The Peoples' Bible. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008. Incorporates multicultural, liberationist, and post-colonial interpretive methods, as well as consideration of the Bible's reception history and history of the text's effects (known as Wirkungsgeschichte). LINK