"I am currently attending seminary (after a decade away from school!)
and one of the things we discussed in a systematics class last quarter
was the understanding of the "Word of God" as having three forms: The
incarnate Word (Jesus), the written Word (Scripture) and the spoken
Word (Preaching God’s revelation)."

The problem is that there is no conclusive proof that Jesus was speaking the incarnate word - you merely have to accept it.  I don’t believe that scholars can do that.  I go back to my original point that "Even if these writtings are "the word of God" they where interpreted by
the person who received these word and documented them.  This
interpretation that was done must of included the person’s perspective
and agenda."  I would hape to apply this to any writting (OT, NT, Koran, whatever…).  Based upon this logic, we shall never know the true word of God or the incarnate.

PW states later on in this thread "As for the four Jewish ways of interpreting the scripture: I have a
feeling that the NT turns the tables on ‘midrash’ - in that the birth
accounts of Jesus in Matthew follow a midrashic pattern, but (to my
mind) pointing to things that actually happened, rather than cleverly
spun inventions."

I don’t believe the NT changes anything because my point still applies.  Even today history is written and interpretted.  Many people have researched the assasination of JFK but they don’t all agree with The Warren Report.  Unless you are positive that the writters of history in the days of NT are somehow more capable then today then I think the methods described in John’s post apply regardless. 

Andrew then posts "I think we still need to grasp more clearly that the ‘adaptability of the faith’ is dependent not in the first
place on a way of reading the text but on the responsiveness of the historical community to the calling of God to be an
effective, contextualized missional people."

To expand on this I would say that ‘adaptability of faith’ is dependant on the perspective of the person reading the text.  The question I have is - can perspective be taught?

If only Moses, Mohamed, Jesus, Paul, et al had been alive in the 20th century so that we might have had multiple sources of media to document this history.  Imagine moses.blogspot.com???

A lot of this will never be resolved and will be up to the interpretation of the individual.