I wonder what all the christians believed prior to the revelations of the modern textual critics, and whether they understood the reasons for some of the slight differences in the reading.
The masoretic Hebrew itself has a system of textual criticism embedded in the text itself.
There were three different tasks of copying the OT. The Sopherim wrote the consonantal text. The Nakdanim added the vowel points and accents. The Masoretes added the marginal notes. An example is the Kethib (what is written) and Qere (what should be read). There are over 1,300 of these. The vowels of the Qere were written in the text of the Kethib. There are three different systems of vowel pointing, the Babylonian, Palestinian and Tiberian which the Masoretes created. The marginal notes called Masora were mainly written in Aramaic and were like a concordance.
http://www.bibleandscience.com/languages/hebrew.htm
It wasn't an earth shattering issue. It never has been. The first gentile problem (it seems) was with the old Itala. The old Itala mss are/were notorious for their conflicting readings.
Jerome's Latin Vulgate (5th century) was the solution and went through several hands and revisions for over 1000 years.
http://wayoflife.org/fbns/jerome-latinvulgate.html
It was later claimed to be written in the "language of heaven" and better than the Greek.
It seems there are always those who must insist upon a translation which has fallen from heaven.
In my view, the original language mss should be the focus of "preservation" and translations secondary at best.
As Brother Ed has pointed once the obvious mss scribal blunders of the original laguage mss are resolved: spelling, word order (metathesis), homoioteuluton (a predictable kind of omission), etc, 2-4% of the text is affected. It has always been this way, more so with NT scribes and their work.
It didn't rattle Jesus when He read from the Book of Isaiah, so why get upset?
The KJVO are the modern counterparts of the Latin Vulgate Only adherents many of whom loudly proclaim that the sky is falling everytime an mv is published, some of them attributing the work to Satan.
No translation is perfect, the 1611 AV underwent it's first revision in 1613, for instance.
As to Greek Text, personally I believe the Scrivener TR (1894/5) is the "virtual" reproduction of the Greek NT. I know most BBers would disagree. However, I'm not the type to stage a Grand Inquisition as is so common here at the BB.
In fact I stand with the mv folks because of (IMO) the KJVO double-standards (e.g. things which are different are not the same (unless it's the 1611 AV compared to the 1769 AV)), the KJVO view of "second inspiration" and "advanced revelation".
HankD
