Why None of This Should Shake You

Having walked through text-families, a shorter Jeremiah and centuries of hand copying, the honest question is whether any of it should unsettle you.
Start with why we know about it. We can compare readings because thousands of manuscripts survive across many centuries and languages. A document with a single surviving copy has no visible variants at all - and no way to check it either. Abundance is what makes the variation visible.
Then the scale. Scholars who have done the counting conclude that the overwhelming majority of variants are spelling and word order. Philip Schaff calculated that of the variants known in his day, not one affected "an article of faith or a precept of duty which is not abundantly sustained by other and undoubted passages."
Even Bart Ehrman, no defender of the faith, granted that essential Christian beliefs are not affected by the variants in the manuscript tradition.
Scripture links:
- Isaiah 40:8 - "the word of our God will stand forever."
- 1 Peter 1:24-25 - "the word of the Lord remains forever."
- Matthew 24:35 - "my words will not pass away."
The evidence is visible because it was never hidden.