This article considers the preservation of the Scriptures in relation to the inspiration of the original manuscripts. The author looks at the history of the Old Testament text, the Masoretic text and its witnesses, including discoveries from the Dead Sea Scrolls. The New Testament is also discussed with equal weight on its purity as far as the autographs are concerned. The discussion also considers the practice of textual criticism, and works with ancient versions (ancient translations), paraphrases, and citations of the Scriptures. The article actually sets out to demonstrate how all these other materials can be used by a student of the Bible to deal with variant readings of the same Scripture passage in different witnesses.