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I believe that you are taking a modern approach to an ancient text. In other words, history has to look a certain way for it to be history. Otherwise, it is "falsifying" the genealogical record. Why would this be a falsifying of the record, given the fact that Matthew already omitted three whole generations? By your argument, all the manuscripts are wrong here, because they do not follow the genealogies in Kings and Chronicles. In fact, how dare Matthew falsify the genealogical record by omitting three whole generations? The fact is that this is ancient history writing, not modern, meaning NOT that it is less accurate, but that it has broader aims. Every historian picks and chooses the facts that he wants to portray (witness the fact that we have four Gospels). Matthew picked and chose the names that he wanted to include in his genealogy, including Asaph and Asa. Besides this, you still have not answered the alternate spelling argument. In any case, these are two ways to explain why the critical text has the readings it does without resorting to Metzger's arguments, which posit an error in the original. There is no reason that any scribe would intentionally change Asa to Asaph, is there? But there is definite reason why a scribe might change Asaph to Asa, since this more closely matches the Kings/Chronicles genealogies (but doesn't necessarily match Matthew's theology). What you have to reckon with here is that the final explanation for a variant's reading must be able to explain why all the other variants arose, or it is not the best reading. I can explain easily the origin of the reading Asa. You cannot explain the origin of the reading Asaph.
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