Apparent contradictions in the Bible are caused mostly by our own lack of understanding.

There are four types of Greek manuscripts (as opposed to versions in other languages): Papyri, uncials, miniscules and lectionaries.

Papyri are the oldest of the four catagories. Due to the nature of the material, there are relatively few New Testament papyri, and the ones which we have are relatively fragmentary. However, as of 1989 there were 96 New Testament Papyri catalogued.

Uncials tend to be newer than papyri but are none the less quite ancient. They are written in capital letters with the words run together KINDOFLIKETHIS. The uncial style of handwriting was phased out around the beginning of the ninth century, and there were, as of 1989 299 catalogued manuscripts of this type.

Miniscules are written in a smaller, cursive hand (thus the name) with seperation between the words. Because miniscules are new (relatively speaking) more of them have survived than any other type of manuscript. In all, 2,812 of them have been catalogued as of 1989.

Lectionaries are books which contain parts of the Bible arranged in daily readings designed for use in Church services. Lectionaries are in effect extensive quotations from the Bible. There were 2,281 Lectionaries catalogued as of 1989.

In addition to this there are the ancient versions (latin, syriac, coptic, georgian, armenian, gothic, etc), and quotations from the Church fathers to take into account. The Fathers are particularly important because we have fairly solid dates for all of those.

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Because of the nature of copying documents by hand, scribes sometimes make mistakes. There are a number of common errors which scribes make, and every single one is found in one Biblical manuscript or another. Often when another scribe copies from a flawed manuscript he will transmit the error as well, occasonally he will correct it and occasionaly mark the variant with a special character. Eventually four families of manuscripts emerged based on characteristic readings. These four text types are commonly known as the Alexandrian, Western, Caesarean and Byzantine.

Two of these text types deserve particular attention. The Alexandrian is judged by most to be the oldest of the four, and is characterized by generally shorter readings and a rougher, less elegant style. The Byzantine is regarded by most to be the most recent and it is characterized by a smooth, polished style and a pattern of conflated readings (i.e. combining two variants together to make a third). The Byzantine text is also (generally speaking) the majorty text, as it is found in the majority of all miniscules.

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There are quite a few variant readings. The actual number is somewhat larger than 200,000. That number, however, is incredibly misleading for a number of reasons. For one thing, a great many of those variant readings involve the spelling of proper names. For another, Greek is an inflected language (i.e. nouns, adjectives and participles have different endings depending on what part of speech they are functioning as) so word order is not of the utmost importance, and occasionaly a scribe will feel free to move words around, which changes the meaning not one whit. In the end, there are very few variants which make any substantive change in the meaning of the text, and not one doctrine (major or minor) hangs solely on any of those passages.

It is important to analyze variant readings individually because even the best manuscripts contain errors from time to time, and even those manuscripts generally regarded as corrupt will preserve a good reading here and there. Because of this it is impossible to say anything general about the majority and minority of manuscripts other than what I have already mentioned in my comments on the Byzantine text type.

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Suggested reading:

Beginner: A General Introduction to the Bible by Norman Geisler and William Nix
Advanced: The Text of the New Testament, It's Transmission, Corruption and Restoration by Bruce Metzger; The Text of the New Testament by Kurt and Barbara Aland

If we've killed God, then we've had about as much luck keeping him dead as the Romans did.