BSN

Is the Word of God preserved — or progressively reconstructed? In Bible Studying, Not Reconstructing (BSN), Ced Ed confronts one of the most overlooked tensions in modern Christianity: the shift from confessed preservation to scholarly stabilization. For centuries, believers preached Scripture as settled, guarded by providence, recognized by the Church, and carried faithfully across generations. Yet in the modern era, textual confidence is increasingly framed in terms of probability, manuscript weighting, and ongoing revision. Critical editions evolve. Verses are bracketed. Footnotes signal uncertainty. Certainty is described as "increasing." What happens when preservation language remains strong in confession, but reconstruction governs in practice? BSN does not attack scholarship. It does not deny manuscript plurality. It does not caricature textual criticism. Instead, it asks a structural question: Who governs final confidence in the text of Scripture — divine promise or scholarly adjudication? Drawing from church history, confessional statements, manuscript traditions, variant case studies, and modern editorial processes, this book traces the evolution of textual methodology from the early Church through the rise of the critical text. It examines the Byzantine majority tradition, Alexandrian priority theory, Westcott and Hort, Nestle-Aland revisions, disputed passages such as Mark 16 and John 8, and the confessional language of providential preservation. The issue is not whether doctrine survives textual variation. The issue is hierarchy. When revision meets revelation, one must sit higher. BSN challenges readers to confront the authority structure beneath modern textual confidence and to decide whether preservation is functioning as settled reality — or as theological rhetoric. Preach the Word. Not the probability.