NIV vs KJV: which is better?

NIV vs KJV at a glance

The King James Version and the New International Version are the two best-known English Bibles, and they were made for different moments. The KJV was produced under royal commission and published in 1611. The NIV was begun in 1965 by evangelical scholars who chose to make a fresh translation from the original languages rather than update an older one.

Different source texts: Textus Receptus vs critical text

The biggest difference lies less in the English than in the Greek behind it. The KJV New Testament translates the Textus Receptus, the printed Greek editions that began with Erasmus in 1516 and were later revised by Stephanus and Beza. Erasmus worked mainly from a few late medieval manuscripts. In the Old Testament, the KJV follows the Hebrew Masoretic Text.

The NIV New Testament follows an eclectic Greek text based on the latest Nestle-Aland and United Bible Societies editions, which give more weight to the oldest surviving manuscripts, such as Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus. Its Old Testament uses the Masoretic Text in the latest Biblia Hebraica, occasionally following the Dead Sea Scrolls or other ancient witnesses where the Hebrew seems doubtful, usually with a footnote.

Most textual scholars today prefer the critical text. Those who favor the KJV argue that the received text reflects the Greek the churches used through the centuries. The two traditions agree on most of the New Testament; the NKJV preface estimates the shared portion at about 85 percent.

Verses the NIV places in footnotes

Because of that textual choice, a few verses found in the KJV appear in the NIV only as footnotes, with the verse number kept in brackets. The NIV does not hide them: the note prints the wording and says that some manuscripts include it.

Acts 8:37. In the KJV, the baptism of the Ethiopian official includes this exchange: “And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.” The NIV moves from verse 36 to verse 38 and gives the exchange in a footnote.

1 John 5:7. The KJV reads: “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.” The NIV's verses 7 and 8 speak only of the three that testify, and its footnote explains that the longer wording comes from late manuscripts of the Latin Vulgate and is not found in any Greek manuscript before the fourteenth century. This passage, known as the Johannine Comma, is the best-known textual difference between the two Bibles.

Other verses the NIV keeps in footnotes include Matthew 17:21, Matthew 18:11, John 5:4 and Romans 16:24. Two longer passages, Mark 16:9-20 and John 7:53-8:11, stay in the NIV text but are set off by a note saying the earliest manuscripts do not include them.

Reading level and language

Bible Gateway's translation guide rates the KJV at a twelfth-grade reading level and the NIV at about seventh grade; the NIV's publisher puts it at eighth grade. The gap comes less from sentence length than from vocabulary: thee and thou, verb endings such as -eth, and words whose meaning has shifted since 1611.

Two examples show the problem. In 1 Thessalonians 4:15 the KJV says the living “shall not prevent them which are asleep”, where prevent has its older sense of coming before. In 2 Thessalonians 2:7, “he who now letteth will let” uses let in its old sense of hindering. Modern translations, the NIV among them, put these ideas into current words, so the reader needs no glossary.

The NIV also works to keep its English current. For its 2011 update, the translators commissioned a study of gender language drawing on the Collins Bank of English, a database of more than 4.4 billion words of contemporary English.

Translation philosophy

The KJV is a formal, word-for-word translation that stays close to the structure of the original. The NIV's committee chose a middle path, balancing transparency to the original with clarity of meaning. In practice the NIV more often restructures a sentence or renders an idiom by its sense, while the KJV more often keeps the original wording and image and leaves the interpretation to the reader.

Which should you choose?

The right choice depends on what you value most in a Bible you will use every day.

• Choose the KJV if you value the traditional Textus Receptus, want the wording of the historic English Bible, or memorize Scripture in its classic form.
• Choose the NIV if you want to read long passages easily, are new to the Bible, or want a translation based on the oldest manuscripts in today's English.
• Choose the NKJV if you want the KJV's Greek text and much of its style in updated English.
• Use both side by side for study: where they differ, the footnotes usually explain why.