The wording of this question makes it very abiguous, and difficult, for christianity is the results of evolved indoctrinated religious hype that has grown from the teachings of the wonderful spiritual mentor 'Jesus' , which we find in essence within the bible if we prune away all the rubbish. In truth I do not think Jesus would be very impress with the many present day translations were he able to comment himself.
As an archaeologist I accept the validity and worth of the ancient scripts that make up the biblical compilation, but this does not mean one has to necessarily accept the actual bible. Resaerch from the origional ancient texts reveals quite catageorically that the contents of the bible have been systenatically manipulated and subjected to translatory bias for hundreds of years. And thus the book does not reflect academically proven truth but a social cultural and political interpretation. Please do not think I am anti Christian, the bible is not the only ancient work of literature that has suffered in this manner; such is the great ego of humanity that globally amongst all races and cultures we have systematically changed truth to suit our own ends since the dawn of time. An in-depth study of ancient myths reveals a multitude of encoded truths that once held meaning.
If we consider that the biblical information, even that of the old testament, is very recent in historic terms, and look to reality without allowing indoctrinated faith to cloud our judgement, we can perceive the social engineering that deposed goddess appreciation (which sprung from the celebration of the magic of creation), and substituted the gods heralding the rise of patriarchy.
Humanity has walked upon this planet for over 6 million years, and throughout our long childhood the divine was perceived as feminine. Hesiod only introduced the gods in 500BC, not even 3,000 years ago, a meer snipet of time, in which humanity has been sold the image of god as male. Christanity continually teaches god our 'Father' and yet when looking for material evidence it is the bible that provides us with proof of how biased this is, for in the early texts when Abraham experiences the burning bush the divine says "I am what I am" , not even implying personage! Male divine imagery slowly creeps into the bible's later texts understandably in keeping with the social changes of the time, just as the gods deposed the goddess. Jesus lived in an era when to be female was to hold no consequence, a woman was merely the possession of her husband. So it is understandably that when speaking of the divine, in order to be taken seriously the masculine was used. Also we must remember that Jesus was teaching amongst people who knew him, and knew his mother. He was the son of Mary, this was a proven and witnessed fact, yet he could employ metaphor regarding his 'Father' for the factuality of his paternity could never be proven.
The sad truth is that the bible, just like the ancient myths is truth encoded within highly manipulated script. As such in essence it still has much to offer of the mentor's teachings, and yet we should not allow it to be used to fuel arguement for it does not comtain a great deal of proven factuality.