Damn.
Why am I always so late in coming to these parties?
I read about half of the posts in this thread; I simply do not have the time to slog through them all.
I find that when entering discussions about the Bible, what tends to complicate things is the wide ranging and varied opinions and misconceptions that lay people tend to hold with regards to
what the Bible is, and what it ought to be. If anyone is all that keenly interested in the Bible, where it came from, how it developed, why it is such an influential book, and how and why religions have come to read and teach it the way that they do, allow me, first to make a book recommendation. James L. Kugel,
How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture Then and Now (New York / London / Toronto / Sydney: Free Press, 2007), is my current favourite popular book on the subject. I also recommend that you check out Prof. Kugel's own webpage:
www.jameskugel.com, which has some good additional resources. An especially good read there is the downloadable appendix that he wrote to the book, entitled:
"Apologetics and 'Biblical Criticism Lite'", in which he launches into a very good critique of the current establishment of biblical scholarship.