The Greek text which stands behind the King James Bible is demonstrably inferior in certain places. The man who edited the text was a Roman Catholic priest and humanist named Erasmus.1 He was under pressure to get it to the press as soon as possible since (a) no edition of the Greek New Testament had yet been published, and (b) he had heard that Cardinal Ximenes and his associates were just about to publish an edition of the Greek New Testament and he was in a race to beat them. Consequently, his edition has been called the most poorly edited volume in all of literature! It is filled with hundreds of typographical errors which even Erasmus would acknowledge. Two places deserve special mention. In the last six verses of Revelation, Erasmus had no Greek manuscript (=MS) (he only used half a dozen, very late MSS for the whole New Testament any way). He was therefore forced to ‘back-translate’ the Latin into Greek and by so doing he created seventeen variants which have never been found in any other Greek MS of Revelation! He merely guessed at what the Greek might have been. Secondly, for 1 John 5:7-8, Erasmus followed the majority of MSS in reading “there are three witnesses in heaven, the Spirit and the water and the blood.” However, there was an uproar in some Roman Catholic circles because his text did not read “there are three witnesses in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit.” Erasmus said that he did not put that in there... Blah blah blah http://www.bible.org/page.asp?page_id=665
Before you throw out accusations of closed mindedness, fear or a "spoonfed" existance, realize that I've studied religions from Daoism to the moonies to Christianity, Shinto, Zen and others. I have a cousin who has been a bible scholar for years, many in the Vatican and has met the Pope. I've taken tidbits from many religious beliefs. I do not adhere to the strictures of ANY singular faith because, being administered by man, inspired or not, they are all flawed. No one faith can claim the "Truth" and back it up. I am human and therefore I am flawed, I can only believe what God tells me through my own prayers, readings and dreams. I believe the Bible tells a story and teaches through the words of God through Christ. It also gives us laws, insights, and first hand experience, but should not be taken literally in all cases. I try to live a good life as beat I can, I try not to tell anyone that what I believe is penultimate, and I try not to insult someone else's beliefs (I can't say I succeed daily in this endeavor, but I'm human).