bill-i presume that the great scientists like newton were ,in your view, not thinking scientifically in presupposing a Creator who is able to bring all into existence, and orderly in bringing into being what became known as laws by which his creation could be investigated.
i rather,would say that those presupposing no creator are unscientific ,hoping somehow that an explanation can be found that denies the obvious ie that anything that comes into existence must have a sufficient cause.

the bible is not the result of only a "few" ms but many.the differences between them are mostly minor.jewish scribes were i understand,very careful.
many other ancient works have less and later copies but are considered reliable history - probably because they have no supernatural element.
this is known as presuppositional bias ,i think