The Bible has been redacted, doctored, changed, shortened, re-worded, altered, falsified, mistranslated, etc. by men. We don't even agree as to what consitutes biblical canon; how can we even speak of "everything in the Bible?"
The Bible cannot be used as a reliable source of scientific knowledge. Placing trust in the Bible to explain the world's physical make-up would not cause one to know the world correctly. The Bible was not intended to be the encyclopedia of zoology, botany, astronomy, etc. but of spiritual revelation -- of morality, of our ancestral transgression, and of God's salvific work.
Those who mistook the Bible for an encyclopedia believed that the moon couldn't have craters, or that the heavens were the sky above (in fact in Slavonic the word for "sky" and "heaven" is one and the same); they believed the world to be flat; they believed the diseases are caused by demons; they believed lightening was God's anger, etc.
The Bible does not say the earth is round; it does not say lightening is what it is; it does not reveal anything we know of the world today. It reflects the knopwledge of the people who wrote it; not God's knowledge of the world. Most of its events cannot be corroborated; most of the people in it may or may not have existed. The Bible teaches what is good and what is evil, not how the world is. The "errors" of the Bible are human errors of; errors of mixing God's revelation with man's limited knowledge; using man's limited senses to conceive the Unlimited; using imperfect language to describe the Perfect. They are errors of transcribing, interpreting, memory loss, etc. What remains true in any version is God's spiritual message, His love and His glory. As I see it, 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. Used for anything esle, it missess the mark.
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.