Why did I use the NIV bible version?

All scripture references are from the New International Bible unless otherwise stated. My Greek Bible is linked to the KJV i.e. Strongs. Differences between the NIV and KJV are indicated in my website. The differences amount to very little in so far as they affect the interpretation of Revelation.

The Textus Receptus (received text) upon which the KJV is mainly based was the edition produced by Erasmus in 1516, with further work by Stephanus (d 1559) and Theodore Beza (d 1605). Erasmus did not have the last six verses of Revelation and he translated it into Greek from the Latin Vulgate, see 'tree of life' (NIV) vs 'book of life' (KJV) in Rev 22:19. Erasmus had only one copy of Revelation in the Greek and a copyist copied this for him, as he had to give the manuscript back. The copyist had difficulties because the text of Revelation was buried within a commentary and therefore some mistakes were made. Some of these eventually found their way into the KJV.

In Revelation the Majority Text (MT) and Critical Text (CT) mostly agree, the major differences are with the RT upon which the KJV is based. "I counted 140 verses within the book of Revelation where the Received Text (RT) does not agree with the Majority Text. Also, I noted 23 verses of the Critical Text that do not agree with the MT. Clearly the CT is much closer to the original than the RT in the book of Revelation." (Greek Texts and The Revelation ). Therefore as far as Revelation goes we are safer using the NIV rather than the KJV.

Carson in "An Introduction to the New Testament" states: Kurt and Barbara Aland claim, "In the book of Revelation the textual scene and its history differs greatly from the rest of the NT." This is due to two factors. First, Revelation has far fewer Greek manuscript witnesses than any other NT book. Revelation originally circulated independently of the rest of the NT, and the nature of the book, combined with suspicions about it in the East, where the bulk of Greek manuscripts were produced, cut down the number of copies made. Extant are only five papyrus manuscripts, the longest containing eight chapter (from the third century), and eleven unicials, only six of which contain any substantial portion of text, and only three of which contain the whole book (Sinaiticus, from the fourth century; Alexandrinus, from the fifth century, and 046, from the tenth century). While in most of the NT, Sinaiticus is considered to have a text superior to that found in Alexandrinus, the situation is reversed in Revelation.