Irreconcilable Differences?

There is a good article from the NY Times about a book published by Professor James L. Kugel, formerly of Harvard and now teaching in Israel, called "How to Read the Bible". The book runs 800 pages but the article is a nice description of the professor's belief that modern scholarship has resulted in a focus on "the raw materials that made up the Bible", an approach that misses the point of the "real Bible". While the professor points to how we approach the Bible as being more important than the raw material, Christians would add that the basis for an approach to the Bible that is "real" is the Holy Spirit. That is, that the Bible is not interpreted, instead it's message is discerned. At any rate, the thing that interested me is the notion, already raised in the early stages of the ELCA's Bible reading initiative, that modern scholarship's concentration on "the raw materials" and orthodox views of the Bible based on the active presence of God through the materials are, as the title of the article states, "Irreconcilable Differences in Bible's Interpretations". It's worth thinking about and discussing. You can find the article at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/15/us/15beliefs.html?_r=1&oref=slogin