It would be great if we could go read the very first edition of the Gospel of Matthew, or the first scroll of Isaiah, but those documents have been lost to the ages. Instead, we're working with copies of copies of copies of the original works.Still, it seems these texts were faithfully (if imperfectly) preserved. While we do find variants in biblical manuscripts, on the whole, the message and content has been largely the same for the past few millennia.