I think the point about ignoramuses is that every age has them, but their contribution does not usually survive. Most people have heard about Thomas Aquinas, few about Etienne Tempier, who tried to shut him up.

And the writers of the Bible, well many of them were pretty good. Deutero-Isiah, and the writer of Ecclesiastes, well they were up there with the best, Shakespeare for instance. Its a great pity that the term "gospel" has come to be used to mean "to be taken absolutely literally". For I am sure that is not what most of the writers of the Bible mean't, any more than Milton or Bunyan. The gospels sure, have a great deal of historical veracity, particularly that of Luke, but even there the differences between accounts of the same events reflect that they were assembled from second hand, often imperfect recollections some years after the events that they describe.