Ah, you quote from BM, who, among other things, believed, Moses did not write the Pentateuch, Deuteronomy was not written until 700 years before Christ, the Old Testament is a mixture of “myth, legend, and history,” the record of the worldwide flood of Noah’s day is exaggerated, the book of Job is a folktale, the miracle accounts about Elijah and Elisha contain “legendary elements,” Isaiah was written by Isaiah plus two or three unknown men who wrote centuries later, the record of Jonah is a “legend,” Daniel does not contain supernatural prophecy, Paul did not write the Pastoral Epistles, Peter did not write 2 Peter, etc. All of these unbelieving lies can be found in the notes to the Reader’s Digest Condensed Bible, which were written by Metzger, and in the New Oxford Annotated Bible, of which Metzger is a co-editor!
Metzger, whom you quote says, "no patristic writer prior to the last third of the fourth century testifies to the reading θεός", which is not at all true.
Ignatius, who lived between 35-108 A.D., the time of most of the Apostles, wrote:
"εν σαρκι γενομενοϛ Θεοϛ" (To the Ephesians, 8:2), "God having come in the flesh", which is clearly a free quote from 1 Timothy 3:16.
There are others who quote this from the Greek NT
If you are interested in the real textual evidence for this verse, then I suggest looking at John Burgon's work,
http://www.trinitystudies.org/Jesus/1tim3_16_burgon.pdf
