The KJV is not the best (or ONLY) version of the Christian Bible

All right. I'd like to thank HotSause for taking the con against my resolution. I hope we have a good and educational debate. While many Christians have pulled away from the King James version of the Bible, there are those who stick with it and claim that it is the ONLY version. The other versions, especially the NIV, are of the devil, in their eyes. I have found, however, that many the person I have argued with on this topic don't know why they believe in the KJV as they do. They only quote to me the same clich"s and catchphrases their pastors have fed them. Often times I do come off as intimidating because I know more about the Greek of the New Testament than the average Christian, so the reactions I get are normally anger and frustration, since they have no chance of defending themselves in the higher realm of things they do not know. I don't know everything, but what I know is sufficient. The King James Bible, despite what someone once told me, was NOT the first to be printed. Gutenberg invented the printing press around 1440. The first Bible printed was the Mazarin Bible, sometimes called the Gutenberg Bible, and it was in Latin. Now, I would hope that most people know that there is no one Greek manuscript that has been handed down straight from the apostles to be translated in English. In fact, we do not have the original documents (or, autographs) of the apostles. All we have are copies of copies of copies of copies. Unfortunately, we can see today that over time, the Greet text of the NT has changed over time. While many of these changes are simply misspellings and a change in word order (which doesn't usually affect translation), there are variants in the text, some fairly major, that can indeed affect one's look on doctrinal issues. Therefore, we enter into the world of textual criticism. Textual criticism, among other things, mainly involves the effort of trying to compile one Greek text from multiple sources that is as close to the original writings of the apostles as possible. Today, every major version of the Bible is based off of a critical text, including the KJV. Here follows a history of that text. James Lopez de Stubica was commissioned by a wealth Spanish cardinal to create what became known as the Complutensian Polyglot Bible, printed in 1514 (http://www.bible-researcher.com...). While it contained the first printed critical text, it was not the first to be approved by the pope and published. When Swiss printer Johann Froben commissioned Dutch Roman Catholic humanist scholar Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam in 1515 to beat out the polyglot with his own Greek NT edition, Erasmus did not have the luxury of obtaining very ancient manuscripts from the Vatican as Lopez de Stubica had. Froben gave Erasmus 6 months to complete his text, but by the end, work had extended to 10 months. Erasmus lamented at his task, for he had access to only six Greek manuscripts, and they were all of them incomplete. His oldest and best was from the 10th century, but he hardly used it. The gospels were in 4 of the manuscripts, the oldest from the 15th century. Acts and the general epistles were in 3, the oldest from the 12th century. Revelation was in only one (12th cent.) and was missing the last page, so for his work, he had to back translate from the Latin Vulgate into Greek. In the places of his work where the Greek was missing or unclear, there too he used the Catholic Vulgate, resulting in at least a dozen places where his reading is supported by NO Greek manuscript. This was released in 1516 and did beat Lopez's work in distribution. Due to his being rushed, Erasmus then worked on a 2nd edition (1522) which contained over 400 corrections and changes. It was from this edition that Martin Luther made his German translation. For his 3rd edition, the Catholic Church placed pressure upon him because his earlier two editions did not contain I John 5:7, a verse that was only found in later copies of the Vulgate. He told them that he would not put it in his text unless they could produce for him a Greek MS that contained it. So they soon returned to him with what is known today as MS 61, one of 2 Gk MSS that have I John 5:7, and they both date to the 15th century. [MS 61 was made to order by an Oxford scribe named Roy.] It was from this edition, as well as Luther's German Bible and the Latin Vulgate, that William Tyndale created the first English New Testament based upon a Greek text. Erasmus made a couple more editions, but they never gained much fame. Robert Estienne, a.k.a. Stephanus, used Eramus's 3rd edition and added his own Grk MSS to the mix (Codex Bezae, late 5th/early 6th cent.) Theodore Beza added in some readings from his own 6th cent. MSS. Then Dutch brothers, the Elzivirs, took mainly this text and produced 7 of their own editions. The 2nd one came to be known as the Textus Receptus, "Received Text", not because of scholarly opinion, but because the brothers had made such a lofty claim in the advertising of it. And it is this Greek text that forms the backbone of the KJV New Testament, which also, by the way, relies upon other translations. This is from the 1611 title page: "Newly Translated out of the Originall tongues: & with the former Translations diligently compared and revised, by his Majesties speciall Comandement." Today, we have over 5,800 manuscripts of the Greek NT, ranging from the size of a credit card to complete volumes containing books not even in most Bibles today. Therefore, tt is noticable that textual variants are regional, and so manuscripts are classified today as being either Alexandrian, Egyptian, Eclectic, Western, and Byzantine. Because they tend to contain alien readings, it is usual that the Egyptian and Eclectic texts cannot be seriously considered in the realm of textual criticism. The Western manuscripts (including Codex Bazae) tend toward paraphrase at times and contain very deliberate changes. As such, even though it does have its place in textual criticism, I consider these manuscripts to be poor sources for the named reason. The Byzantine texts collectively are referred to as the "Majority Text", as they do indeed make up a vast majority of the Greek NT MSS available to this day. I point out here that the Textus Receptus differs from the majority text in 1,838 places. In other words, there are 1,838 differences between the majority of manuscripts and the KJV, and some of them are fairly significant. The Alexandrian texts contain the oldest manuscripts we have of the Greek New Testament. This is mostly due to the dry conditions where these came from. How old are these MSS? While small, mostly insignificant fragments date as early as about 135-150 AD, the more useful ones are from the 3rd and 4th centuries. The Codex Sinaiticus (330-360 AD) and Codex Vaticanus (325-350 AD) form the backbone of Westcott & Hort's critical text (1881). I own a copy of this text, and it includes all the textual variants between it, the Received Text, and Nestle & Aland Text. The later, the Nestle & Aland, is the source for most Bible versions today, as it takes into account the large cache of ancient papyrus MSS found buried in the Egyptian desert, those papyrus manuscripts dating as far back as the 2nd and 3rd centuries. The differences between the Textus Receptus and Nestle & Aland are not few: approximately 8,000. You can find a VERY partial listing at http://www.kjvtoday.com.... I make this my 2nd round argument because it lays the base for everything I have to say hereafter. Based upon the facts, the newer translations OMIT nothing. Because they are based on the earliest texts, we must surmise that the KJV is full of ADDITIONS. Here I step back and let con take the stage with his first arguments.