Cannonization and Contradiction

Here's something that I'm curious about, though I don't see anyway to answer the question. There are a large number of contradictions (or apparent contradictions, if you prefer) in the Bible. Different sets of laws for the same holiday, different accounts of the same story, differing genealogies of the same family, etc. Now, we notice these contradictions. The scholars of the enlightenment noticed them. The medievals were aware of them. The Rabbis were aware of them. Pre-rabbinic sectarians were aware of them. Hellenistic writers noticed them. The authors of the Psudeopigrapha, some of which dates back nearly to the Babylonian exile, tried to deal with Biblical contradictions. So, was there ever a time when people weren't concerned with the contradictions in the Bible? And if there wasn't, why did so many people spare the time and effort to deal with them, instead of rejecting the Bible entirely? Now, from a religious perspective the answer is obvious. And that's all good and well, but it's also boring. Does anybody have a good historical answer to this question? At the bottom, what I'm asking is "How did a set of books so riddled with contradictions get to be cannonized?" We don't really know enough about the cannonization process to say for sure, but is anybody willing to entertain a guess?