There is no reason to doubt any discussion about the BIBLE will always break down into a discussion of FAITH "in" the Bible rather than the Bible itself.
This is clear: the Bible cannot speak for itself.
It REQUIRES a thousand shouting voices to prop it up.
If you know somebody who is a Hoarder you know they can't stop themselves from bringing objects into their home which pile up until there is no home left---only layers and layers of "things" without context in a normal life.
This is the BIBLE.
Generations of hoarders have brought snippets of stories, myths, oral tales, rumors, exaggerations, historical tidbits, fables, stolen folk tales,
hallucinations, dreams, urban legends and such INTO A COLLECTION (a "home", if you will) between two covers.
It was a COMPULSION to do so.
There was gradually acquired an unshakeable belief that this collection---this hoard---was somehow supernaturally inspired.
FROM THAT POINT THERE WAS NO HOUSECLEANING POSSIBLE!!
We grow up in that house full of the hoarder's collection. It is NORMAL to our eyes because we've never NOT known it as it is.
But---at a certain point in our life we catch a glimpse of a NORMAL life WITHOUT such hoarding of worthless tidbits passed off as essential for life.
At that point-----we either move out of the craziness and begin a life FREE from the obsessive compulsions of the hoarder. Or---we continue as before...completely LOST in a mysterious fog of imagination.....totally devoid of all context......and requiring greater and greater amounts of
energy to maintain the desperate illusion that ......somehow.....it is the MOST IMPORTANT thing in the universe.