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text criticism
“[T]he careful study of the ancient texts in an effort to establish what the original manuscripts of the Bible said”;1 also called textual criticism.

From 40 Questions About Interpreting the Bible by Robert Plummer:

We have historical records of extensive text criticism from at least as far back as Origen (A.D. 185-254), but the modern flowering of the discipline followed the introduction of the printing press in Europe (1454) and the revival of scholars’ knowledge of Greek and Hebrew at the time of the Reformation. Text criticism has flourished especially in the last two hundred years, with the many discoveries of ancient manuscripts and a growing scholarly consensus on methods.1

From The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy:

Since God has nowhere promised an inerrant transmission of Scripture, it is necessary to affirm that only the autographic text of the original documents was inspired and to maintain the need of textual criticism as a means of detecting any slips that may have crept into the text in the course of its transmission. The verdict of this science, however, is that the Hebrew and Greek text appear to be amazingly well preserved, so that we are amply justified in affirming, with the Westminster Confession, a singular providence of God in this matter and in declaring that the authority of Scripture is in no way jeopardized by the fact that the copies we possess are not entirely error-free.

From Systematic Theology by Robert Letham:

The originals were immediately inspired by God, and the text thereafter has been kept pure by special providential care… . God’s “singular care and providence”1 has never gone into remission. With the discovery of large numbers of new manuscripts in later years, it was not as if God had gone to sleep; the same “singular care and providence” was evident in the discovery and analysis of them. The distinction between the original documents and later copies is connected with the inevitability of errors in transmission through hand-copying. God’s “singular care and providence” does not exclude errors from all copies; it refers to the text as a whole… . Textual criticism has yielded a text that gets us as close to the original as it may be possible to come, a text more complete than possessed by anyone in the first century.

Learn more:

Michael Kruger: The Difference Between Original Autographs and Original Texts
Daniel Wallace: Inspiration, Preservation, and New Textament Textual Criticism
Michael Marlowe: Textual Criticism Is Nothing New
Jeff Spry: Textual Criticism 101 (pdf)

Related terms:

140 Questions About Interpreting the Bible by Robert L. Plummer, page 299.
2Westminster Confession of Faith, 1.8.

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