Is a little knowledge of the history of the Bible a good thing?

I just finished a two week presentation on the History of the English Bible at our regular Wednesday evening Bible study.  More than half the people who attended were from other churches, a fact that is encouraging as evidence of the desire of ordinary people in the pews of our churches to know the history of the book they turn to for answers to the most important questions in life.
The question in the title reflects a quote I found for my presentation from a King James Only partisan who would rather put his faith in a perfect 17th Century translation of the Bible than study the actual history of the transmission of the text down through the centuries.  He contended that we need to take the perfection of the Bible (in his view only the 1611 KJV, the modern versions being of the devil) on faith.  I started my presentation by telling the people who had come to learn about the Bible that in fact they don't have to take it on faith that we have the same words that were written by Moses, David, Luke, and Paul.  The story of the copying and translating of the Bible is a fascinating piece of history in its own right, but it is also an amazing tale of bravery, dedication, and scrupulous scholarship. 
To learn about the history of the Bible is to learn about a human process.  The doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture is the portion of that process that we need to take on faith.  In other words, I believe that when Isaiah, or John, or James was writing Scripture God had a hand in the process.  The words came from men, but were inspired by God, the words reflected the vocabulary and history of those men, but the truths flowing through them were God's.  From that point, when the original autographs, penned by the authors, began to be copied and circulated, the process was not divine, but human.  Errors and mistakes crept in; imagine copying the whole Bible by hand, wouldn't you makes a few mistakes along the way?  But, instead of wrecking our faith in the Bible, this process actually uplifts it.  The copyists mistakes have been preserved.  That's a good thing, it means that the original text is in there too.  When we compare the thousands of copies of the Bible, spread out all around the Roman world and beyond, spanning more than a thousand years, primarily in Greek, but also translated into a half dozen other languages, an amazing thing happens.  The copies agree with each other.  The copying mistakes fall away and become evident, so much so that an agreement of 98% can be made.
Wait a minute, only 98%?  Forget for a moment that the number dwarfs any other ancient document in accuracy of copies, as well as number and age of the copies, is that good enough?  Are we better off pretending that any one particular version of the Bible is perfect?  No, we're not.  The vast majority of the 2% not in agreement are Orthodox statements in and of themselves.  For example, the extra part of I John 5:7-8 that was added by a copyist 1,000 years after John penned the letter.  Is the statement Orthodox?  Clearly, it is a trinitarian statement that we all would agree with.  John would have agree with it, he just didn't write it.  Do we lose the doctrine of the trinity without it?  Of course not.  Any doctrine in the Bible worth fighting for is in the Bible in a lot of places.  Is idolatry bad, um, yeah, the Bible condemns it hundreds of times.  Are we supposed the help the poor, we're told to do so everywhere.  Is Jesus Christ the risen Lord, the Son of God?  The NT is full of confirmation of that teaching, we don't rely on any one verse or phrase to declare it.
The Bible is the most historically accurate and at the same time the most scrutinized document of the ancient world.  It stands up to the assault of any critic who would doubt its accuracy and trounces them with facts.  You don't have to take it on faith that your Bible today is conveying to you the same ideas, thoughts, and truths of the original authors, it is a historical fact far more attested to than anything else we know about human history.  Is it the Word of God?  That's where faith comes in.  A little knowledge of the history of the Bible is a good thing, it will increase your faith in the Word of God.