I have several versions of the bible, and even more on my phone as well as many on the internet, not to mention the greek and hebrew lexicons.
I have no favorite bible, but my absolute least favorite is the KJV. It’s not that I think it is heretical, per se, but it is in a language that people are not familiar with.
About two years ago we were in our local southern baptist church (which is all KJV) and the preacher read a verse. I had it on my phone (KJV) and my wife was reading it in her hard copy (NIV). When the pastor explained what the verse actually means, he quoted, WORD FOR WORD, what was written in her NIV bible.
That was pretty funny. :)
I hate spending half the time reading the KJV and the other half translating it into English. It’s a lot more efficient, and accurate, to focus on what the original greek and hebrew mean in the language we actually speak, than to have to translate every line. It’s worse than just confusing. It can mess up the whole lesson.
And the KJV has a lot of added scripture that was probably inserted by scribes that meant well, but still...
The version is really irrelevant because we have the actual Greek and Hebrew for reference.
Do you have examples or are you referring to the Alexandrian texts? If the Alexandrian texts, they have been shown to be butchered texts of the Gnostics that the New Testament warned about. As we now have older text fragments of the parts that they cut out.
There are different Bible versions, online and offline including I think an updated version of the KJV.
I have found the English Standard Version to be pretty good and where there’s question about the original text, they add a footnote and give the alternate.
It’s very readable but not written at a People Magazine level.
Stay away from the NIV