I agree with most things in your two posts.
Where I disagree is that I don't think that Scripture was ever meant exactly to "fit," since while we believe God inspires and lives within the Church, he doesn't treat us like robots.
We believe that "all Scripture was given by inspiration of God," unless we think that St. Paul was mistaken or lying. We also believe that God has basically preserved the body of Scripture for us.
Why would he inspire, but not preserve? Since humans are the ones he is using to preserve, there will be variations and slight errors, but I find it hard to believe that the Church could the faith of Christ in its purity but not also basically keep intact the words of the Scriptures they reverenced.
Why would we reverence a Gospel book that is riddled with errors or lies? It is a verbal icon of Christ. Just as all icons of Christ in the Orthodox tradition are slightly different from each other, yet clearly show the same person, so also the Gospels. We don't paint icons that look like Martin Luther, label it an icon of Christ, and then tell people -- "go ahead and reverence it, it's the spiritual idea of Christ that you are reverencing."
Why would the verbal icon of Christ be any different? This is why I also disagree when you say, "...it should be a source of spiritual wealth of God's word and used to edify us spiritually through it's message, not its "facts" about the world and history."
Of course it is the spiritual message that is paramount, but a major part of the way that the Bible conveys those spiritual messages is by telling us the history of how God came to earth and became man, and what he did and said while he was here. It is also the history of how God worked in synergia with a people to produce the conditions of the "fullness of time" for the Annunciation to happen.
These are not "cunningly devised fables," to use the words of the Apostle. They are a record of God's "salvific work," as you correctly state the Scriptures are meant to be.
Of course he doesn't. At the same time, why would He give so many different versions of one and the same thing? God does not change.
Obviously, the Jews read the same Scripture when they read the Five Books of Moses, yet they don't see what Christians see in it. The variants are not from God, but from us fallible human beings. Variants are of human origin and represent corruption of Scripture.
"all Scripture was given by inspiration of God,"
Of course. Who else?
Why would he inspire, but not preserve?
You mentioned robots a while back, what makes you think it is up to God to preserve His gift, and not ours to do so? He inspired, He gave us the revelation; it is our gift; we need to take care of it. It is on us to preserve it, to safeguard it against corruption. But, alas, the originals have been lost! Imagine, the most precious things God gave us -- all lost. We lost them. God didn't. Now we have dozens of version of the Bible, with substantial differences that lead to different amounts of information, different kind of information, different meanings and so on.
Why would we reverence a Gospel book that is riddled with errors or lies?
First, the fathers took their time (300 years) to remove various Gnostic lies and satanic verses, separating some 200 documents from the two dozen or so genuine inspired words.
The fact that Jerome and Origen compared texts indicates that they were keenly aware that variants existed but were not sure why. Both made their personal decision as to which was more believable.
Errors kept creeping, but the idea of an invariant Scripture cam only late into Christianity (about 4th century or so), and was influenced by Judaism. Variations of the existing Scripture was simply accepted as such, which is why the Orthodox Church tot his day considers all versions of the Septuagint, for the lack of a better word -- "Septuagint." But, are they? Could we not then extend that view and say any version of the Bible is -- the Bible?
As long as the message of a variant is the same, but places and numbers and people and things have changed slightly, the spiritual truth conveyed is not altered, so it really doesn't matter if material things described happened exactly as described.
But it's not the picture but Christ to Whom we reach through His icon that is in our spiritual eyes when lwe look at His icon; we don't worship the icon, but Christ we think of when we stand in front of it; when we kiss it, we kiss Him and not the wood, or metal. If that is not spiritual i don't know what it!
Bible conveys those spiritual messages is by telling us the history of how God came to earth and became man, and what he did and said while he was here. It is also the history of how God worked in synergia with a people to produce the conditions of the "fullness of time"
Precisely! How God worked in synergia with people. Which would be equally valid if it were Papua Indians as he walked in their lands. But God, for His reasons, chose the Jews to spread His salvific message to the world, starting in the land of Israel. Nevertheless the fact that it works everywhere means that it is not dependent on any particualt location or people because it is spiritual that transcends reason and words.