What about the thousands of variants in the Alexandrian manuscripts?
As for the 3000 variants between Aleph and B in the Gospels (something that the meticulous Herman Hoskier pointed out and Wilbur Pickering ran with, claiming that these two manuscripts have lied to us at least 3000 times), there is a very simple response. It is actually because of such discrepancies rather than in spite of them that these MSS are so valuable. It shows that (1) there was no early Alexandrian recension and therefore no systematic and intentional corruption of the text, and (2) therefore, when Aleph and B agree, their combined testimony must go back quite far. Westcott and Hort estimated that their agreement went back ten generations and must be located near the beginning of the second century.
Majority text folks want it both ways: they want to see heretical motives in a deliberate recension and inconsistency in agreement. You can't have it both ways. Ironically, it is the Byzantine witnesses that, as time goes on, agree more and more. Two great periods of close agreement show strong evidence of a recension, one in the ninth century and one in the eleventh. By the time we get to the fifteenth century, the manuscripts are 98% in agreement with the printed Majority Text. The most likely explanation of this is that there was collusionan intentional recension. It is in fact the only explanation that is based on evidence (Timothy Ralston's doctoral dissertation at Dallas Seminary demonstrated this rather ably).
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