Why the history of the Bible should matter to you.

In two weeks I will finish teaching my seminar on the history of the Bible for the sixth time in the past three years.  I am thankful for each chance that I have had to share the history of how the modern English Bible came to be, from its original Greek and Hebrew autographs to our text today.  An article on today's local newspaper (a syndicated column in the religion page) illustrated to me once again the need for an accurate understanding of the Bible based in historical fact not fantasy.  The two columnists were asked to answer the question, "Why are there so many arguments about what's in the Bible?"  An excellent question, unfortunately this particular question was put to two men who don't actually believe in the Bible, a dubious start to an answer.  The first of the two is an Elder in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints; a Mormon.  Mormons believe that the canon of scripture remains open, that new revelation continues to occur.  The Elder, after referencing "errors" in the modern text, offers up the solution of instead consulting the new revelation of the Book of Mormon (among other new texts).  In the end, a non-Christian Mormon perspective advocates for turning away from the Bible instead of answering the question at hand; not overly helpful.
The second columnist is a pastor of a congregation, but in his attack on the Biblical text, which I will quote shortly, he makes error after error of outright historical falsehoods, all while positing that the Biblical text today is more/less worthless for anything other than being a "moral compass".  The pastor, whose name I will omit so as to not make this personal, claimed that the Bible "has been tweaked, touched up, added to and deleted from to fit the viewpoints of the ruling class as well as serve the personal interest of religious authorities."  There's just one problem with this oft-repeated conspiracy theory, it has no basis in history.  Manuscripts of the Bible have been uncovered, lost in the Egyptian desert since the 2nd and 3rd century, that confirm the accuracy of the hand copied manuscripts (in their thousands, over 5,000 total copies have survived) that supposedly went through this revision.  Why have there been zero new readings found in the recently uncovered manuscripts, does he really believe that the Church changed these copies as well?  And how would they have done so, when there were copies of the text being made all over the Mediterranean world by countless copyists?  Historical fantasy of conspiracies does not make them real.
The line that really made me understand that this particular pastor's education has been sorely lacking in the history of the Bible was this, "It is important to remember, when we read the Bible today we are reading a translation of a translation of a translation in a language that didn't exist when the original Bible was written."  He is absolutely right that English didn't exist when the Bible was written in Greek and Hebrew.  The rest of the sentence is so laughably inaccurate as to be akin to claiming the moon landing was faked.  The modern English Bible (and the not-so-modern KJV as well) is a direct translation from the original Greek and Hebrew with no intermediary languages involved.  The KJV is based upon Erasmus' 16th century printed Greek text, the modern translations (NIV, NASB, ESV, etc.) are all based upon the Nestle-Aland and United Bible Society eclectic text which takes into consideration all of the over 5,000 surviving Greek manuscripts to determine the most accurate original reading.  If you don't understand a simple fact such as how the Bible was translated from its original languages into English, how can I take seriously anything else you say?  The line following that whopper was this, "Scholars agree there are more than 20,000 inconsistencies in the Bible as the result of different people with different viewpoints."  Another ludicrous figure pulled out of a hat to fit the pre-supposition that the Bible is a product of men not God.
When I looked up the columnist's church on the internet, I was not surprised to find that it is a Universalist Church built upon "Spiritual Principles"; Jesus is nowhere to be found on their website, evidently not a part of the equation.
Why does it matter that pastors and the laity know the history of the Bible?  If the faith of the Apostles, and the actual teaching of Christ matter to you, then so does the history of the Word of God.  The world has plenty of people willing to reject the Bible and search for answers elsewhere, we have nothing to fear from the truth, the history of the Bible is plain and clear for all to see, only ignorance.