Who Wrote the Bible?

A friend of mine (who happens to be in the hospital right now in a lot of pain, and could use your prayers) and I frequently get to talking about what the Bible is. We have lamented how so many Christians consider the Bible to be a sort of magical book that just fell out of the sky, or that some deistic god just took over the minds of various authors, and forced their hands to pen the words that we find in the Old and New Testaments.

Another friend of mine recently asked me what I thought of N.T. Wright's book, Simply Christian, and I told him that it was disappointing. After having given this low view of one of my favorite author's books, I thought I better reread it afresh to make sure that I still agreed with my assessment. To my delight, I found it a wonderful read the second time. To make a long story short(er), while rereading this book I found a passage where Wright puts so eloquently what I have been trying to express regarding scripture, so I thought I would post it here:

Supposing scripture, like the sacraments, is one of the points where heaven and earth overlap and interlock... In particular, it enables us to say that the writers, compilers, editors, and even collectors of scripture were people who, with different personalities, styles, methods, and intentions, were nonetheless caught up in the strange purposes of the covenant God--purposes which included the communication, by writing, of his word. It enables us to speak about God the creator (the one we know supremely through the living Word, Jesus) being himself (so to speak) a wordsmith. [It] enables us to insist that, though words are not the only thing God specializes in, they are a central part of his repertoire. It also helps us see that when this God is going to work within his world, he wants to work through his image-bearing human creatures, and that, since he wants to communicate with and through them verbally--in addition to, but also as a central point within, his many other ways of getting things said and done (182).

Any thoughts?