Because you are the son of a reverend I am sure that you are quite familiar with the scriptural concept of the inspiration of the scriptures by the Holy Spirit.
Over 40 authors who were inspired by the same Holy Spirit wrote the 66 books of the Bible. There is also the scriptural concept that the Holy Spirit only opens the scriptures to those who believe in the Lordship of Christ.
Unfortunately an overly scholarly approach to scripture can be a detriment to ones ability to maintain a perspective on the entirety of scripture. Jesus spent many of His discussions with the Jews of His day criticizing them for focusing to narrowly like a lawyer.
Jesus was not against knowing the scriptures, but warned against over applying the traditions of men, thereby overlooking the personal message God was conveying to the person as an individual. Evangelicals would call it being religious toward God, but not having a personal relationship with God. The difference between the two is enormous!
My prayer for you would be that you took a step of faith and asked Jesus to open your eyes to the truths that He wants to share with you as an individual. Disregard your prior knowledge of the Bible and seek His enlightenment beneath the "...uneven book of myth and history".
My personal testimony is that when I believed that Jesus died for me specifically, He began immediately improving my character and has continued to be faithful in encouraging me to change those destructive areas of my life with His strength.
When I took the step to belief a marked transformation occurred, and a simple reading of history will demonstrate that many very evil people were completely transformed well by belief in Jesus Christ. He is to this day the central figure between peoples of the world. (The United States being the only nation with a large group of Biblically oriented Christians).
1. The Muslims of the world see the United States as a Christian Nation. (Ironically the part of America Religious Muslims despise the most is Anti-Christian Hollywood, and on the opposite spectrum, Christian support for the homeland of the chosen people of the Bible).
2. Europe sees the United States as a backward over moral (especially regarding our impeachment of Clinton) Bible thumpers.
3. The major watershed debates in America are:
a. Abortion
b. Homosexuality
c. Personal responsibility (Gov. welfare, Health Care, Guns, Private property...)
Biblical morality divides the world we live in. The passages of scripture have more relevance today than they have in any time in History!
Try rereading the Bible with an open mind.
I have read it with an open mind. But remember, the words in the Bible are competing with the words of everything else I have ever read. Nothing I read is ever put on a pedestal (except for perhaps the Bible when I was a child, but that didn't last), and I pick and choose the best ideas from all sources. To someone like me, words are but words no matter who writes them and they will stand or fall on their own merits. It doesn't matter if we are talking about The Bible, The Principia Mathematica, or Mao's Little Red Book. No man has a monopoly on The Truth, nor is it determined by popular consensus. Words are written by men, no matter from what is claimed to have inspired them, so no book has any intrinsic claim to authority.
Because I am not presuming the conclusion you hope I will arrive at, I have no reason to treat the Bible as anything but a book like any other, full of concepts put on paper by men. I'm willing to consider anything, but all words must earn their credit. But nothing I have ever read in the Bible suggests that it is actually the source of Truth above all other books. And indeed, many books make the this very claim. This is really the problem with the Bible: it has no intrinsic claim to authority, yet the words in it are not particularly compelling when measured by other great written works of man. Many men have written books with purer, more elegant conceptual frameworks than the Bible.
I find inspiration in the elegant construction of useful concepts and ideas, NOT in the claimed authority of the originator. It would be a fallacy of reasoning to do otherwise. But many people live life quite well on much more questionable standards of knowledge.