Kelly,
In your last post, you said, "I am not fond of the practice of taking a text in one English translation and comparing it to another, and then saying that the second translation is somehow inferior to the first because it is translated differently. I think it is an intellectually weak practice. Different could be wrong, but it could also be right. Without further investigation, a decision should not be made."
Frankly, it is not a matter of "different" or "inferior". It is a matter of right or wrong. Why? Because it is a matter of doctrine, reproof, teaching, etc.
"All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works" II Timothy 3:16, 17.
It is Satan's studied effort to pervert the Gospel of Christ so as to deceive, if it were possible, the very elect. One of the most effective ways to do that is to pervert the scriptures so that they appear to support false doctrine.
There are many texts that are perverted in the modern Bibles. The work of the reformers was to get Bibles into the common language of the people, so that they read for themselves what the Gospel is. Those who wrote the original manuscripts did so in the common Greek, not that used by the nobility and the highly educated. Believe it or not, while the KJV has some archaic words, that translation requires a lower reading level (between 4th and 6th grade) than the modern versions (between the 10th grade and college levels).
The KJV tends to use monosyllabic words where as the modern translations use polysyllabic words. Where the KJV uses words like "coasts" to convey borders, the NIV uses the word "environs". What does that mean? I read "environs" and think "environment"? Sounds like it is refering to ecology and weather, not borders.
But what is really of great importance is the fact that the Bible is intended by God to teach doctrine. Should I read a Bible that supports mariology (the RC doctrine that Mary is co-redemptrix and co-mediatrix)? If so, the NIV and other modern tend to support that doctrine by the way it refers to Jesus' parentage (KJV - "Joseph and his mother"; modern versions - "his father and mother" in Luke 2:33). The modern translations refer to Mary in prophecy as a matter of position rather than condition (KJV - "a virgin shall conceive"; modern translations - "the virgin shall conceive" in Isaiah 7:14). The modern translations do what they can to slip immortality of the human soul into the Bible by changing something as simple as a preposition (KJV - "yet in my flesh I shall see God"; modern translations - "from" or "without" in Job 19:26, thus making the experience possible even while the worms are destroying the body, instead of the "after" mentioned in the KJV). Want to know how to make the Creation Sabbath expendable? In the KJV the fourth commandment refers to "the Sabbath" of the Lord our God. Modern translations change the article, a reversing of what they did to the Virgin of Isaiah, by stating that the "seventh day is a sabbath" as though it is one of many, anyone of which could be altered (compare KJV with modern versions in Exodus 20:10).
Folks, it is really dangerous to take a nonchalant approach to what you believe the Bible teaches. While it is possible to learn about Jesus, and what He did for us, it is very easy to be deceived into believing false teaching that could impair, even overturn, your salvation of which Peter warns in II Peter 2:1, 2, "But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction. And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of."