How accurate is the bible?

Consequent Atheist writes:Absolute rubbish! What could it possibly mean to say that you don't have an opinion about virgin births and walking on water and raising the dead because you don't know much about it? Do you likewise have an open mind on the Daoine Sidhe, Unicorns, Astrology and Alien Abduction?

Q: Why do you trust the Old Testament?
A: Both scripture and archaeology indicate there are no significant changes in our copies today for at least five reasons:
God promised to preserve His word in Isaiah 55:10-11; 59:21; 1 Peter 1:24-25, Matthew 24:35. We can trust God.
Jesus and the New Testament confirmed the Old Testament scriptures in Matthew 19:4; 22:32,37; 39; 23:35; Mark 10:3-6; Luke 2:23-24; 4:4; 11:51; 20:37; 24:27,44
Archaeological evidence: In the Septuagint, the Torah was translated into Greek around 400 B.C. The Dead Sea Scrolls were from about 250 B.C. to after the time of Christ, and we can compare them with our Bibles today. Aramaic Targums are translations made around the time of Jesus. The Dead Sea Scrolls are about 95,000 fragments from 867 manuscripts of the Old Testament and other writings. About 1/3 of the Dead Sea scrolls are manuscripts of the Old Testament according to The NIV Study Bible p.1432. Archaeology shows the Bible Jesus knew was preserved. The Nash Papyrus, dated 150 B.C., contains the Ten Commandments combined from Exodus 20:2-17 and Deuteronomy 5:6-6:4f. In it the sixth and seventh commandments are reverses according to The Journey from Texts to Translations p.188.
At wadi Muraba'at/Murabba’at a Hebrew scroll (Mur.88) of ten of the twelve Minor Prophets is from c. 132 A.D. Small fragments of Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Isaiah were found in cave 2. See The Journey from Texts to Translations p.188-189 also says that all Muraba’at scrolls are virtually identical to the Massoretic text.
Early church writers, as early as 97/98 A.D., extensively referred to the Old Testament.
Jewish scribes, even though hostile to Christianity, preserved the same Old Testament found in every Protestant Bible today.

Here's Menahem Mansoor, a professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He founded the Department of Hebrew and Semitic studies there and the Madison Biblical Archaeology Society. He says, "Biblical archaeology's greatest significance is that it has corroborated many historical records in the Bible. Biblical archaeology has failed to deter people who seek to validate religious concepts by archaeological finds. These people should not confuse fact with faith, history with tradition, or science with religion."
Another contributor makes a similar statement. His name is Israel Finkelstein, the co-director of excavations at Tel Megiddo and Professor of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University. He says, "The most obvious failure of archaeology has been the abuse of 'the old biblical archaeology' by semi-amateur archaeologists. I refer to the romantic days when a special breed of archaeologists roamed the Middle East with a spade in one hand and the Scriptures in the other. These were the times of desperate attempts to prove that the Bible was correct."
Another makes a similar statement. He talks about the problems of making religious assumptions based on the historical evidence of the Scriptures. But he also makes this interesting comment: "A fundamental question asked all over the world during the last few centuries is, Is the Bible true? Do the narratives related in it represent real events and are the figures mentioned there real people who lived and acted as the Biblical text tells us they did? In general, the evidence of material culture fits the Biblical account beginning with the period of the settlement of the tribes of Israel in the land of Canaan and the establishment of the kingdom of Israel. Hence, archaeological data are consistent with the view that at least this part of the Biblical account is, in general, true and historically based." This from David Ussishkin. He is the Professor of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University.
Now, isn't this rather odd? These eminent scholars are saying, first of all, that archaeological evidence has demonstrated that the historical record of the Bible is reliable, by and large. But then they add a disclaimer. They warn us not draw religious conclusions from the fact that the Bible is historically accurate. Why not? This would be confusing history with religion. But isn't this precisely the point of the biblical narrative, that its religious claims are rooted in history?

Jar writes:there are actually quite a few of the heresies that might even be considered mainstream theology today.