In this study, we take a short detour from our verse-by-verse study of the days of creation in order to briefly introduce the discipline of textual criticism and then to apply it to several variants in Genesis 1. This lesson lays very basic groundwork for future discussions about textual variation and how God has providentially preserved his Word through centuries and millennia of painstaking copying. A few variants provided the impetus for this study, including a reported action (in Gen 1:9) preserved only in the Septuagint and in a tiny fragment from a Qumran scroll called 4QGen^k.