I think I covered that fairly well, though possibly not in this thread (sweet mercy there are a lot of these threads floating around).
It's the most uber protestant translation out there alongside the Geneva, and I don't place as much faith in the Nestle-Aland (and thus UBS) Greek New Testaments as the majority of modern scholars do. That's just me as a layman making the most informed decision I can, as I don't actually read Greek. A handful of complete manuscripts don't compare to thousands. Stastically I think you're going to get a much more accurate reading if you poll across thousands of data points instead of five. Yes, they added in bits from the dead sea scrolls etc, but the Nestle's text still started out as a compilation of the translation of several unical codices (including work by Westcott and Hort). Unless the source documents have changed completely in newer versions of the Nestle-Aland text some of that influence is still there.
I also greatly prefer the method earlier translators used to the critical method in use today, even if it might be considered less scholarly. The protestant reformation was in full swing, and the emphasis was on the divinity of Christ, and the casting aside of paganism. Any verse that could be translated as a reference to the deity of Christ was translated that way. I greatly prefer that. There are a few places where they missed it, but they got it right quite a bit.
If someone came along with a new bible based upon the majority of texts, I'd probably consider it. The NKJV tried to do that and failed to captivate my attention. There is no greek majority text though, and 100 years of scholarship favors a different mode of translation than I'd prefer.
Like I said though, I have an NASB, and an NIV, and several other translations. I'm not condemning people who use them, nor am I demanding everyone learn English to be saved, or several other arguments I see the KJV only crowd sometimes using. It's not helping the case for why the KJV is still a good translation.
Now, again, I'm not knocking the use of the KJV here. This thread, and many of the posts in it, are advocating a KJV-only position, and that's what I take issue with. Some posts in reply criticise the KJV, which is fair enough if they are attempting to counter arguments from KJV-Onlyists. But for myself, and many others in this thread, the point is simply this - if you want to use a KJV, fine. Nothing wrong with that. You can hear the gospel from the KJV. It's when it is elevated to some near perfect and specially inspired status above other faithful and accurate translations that it becomes an issue.
However, I do want to address something you bring up. You do not need to be a scholar to understand this (I'm a layman just as you are, although I have a more than passing grasp of the Greek), but I still feel like you misunderstand the core premise behind the critical text. The premise on which many of the modern translations work is this - an older reading is to be prefered to a newer reading, unless there are particular circumstances that favour a newer reading.
I'll illustrate it like this - let's say you are playing chinese whispers with 1000 people. The first person says "The sky is blue."
The second person mishears, and says "the pie is blue." Every subsequent person hears accurately, and repeats "The pie is blue". Thus, you have 999 people saying "the pie is blue". 999/1 seems impressive, until you realise that if you are trying to discern what the first person said, all 999 points are inaccurate.
The premise behind textual criticism works in a similar way. You cannot simply tally up the number of manuscripts and go with whatever reading is attested the most. What matters is 'what did the original autographs actually say?' The best way to determine this is to find the earliest MSS, and see what they say.
Also, it's worth pointing out there very few translations rely solely on the uncial codices, simply because there are several MSS of particular parts of the NT that are older, and thus more favourable. Some of these agree with the codices anyway, some do not (usually in minor respects). The Codices themselves are still very useful, however, mostly because those manuscripts are still older than many of the Greek texts used in majority texts. For instance, when Erasmus compiled the TR, which served as a based for the KJV, he relied mostly on a set of Greek texts all dating almost a millennium (a couple more) later than the uncial codices, and even more compared to some minuscules used in the critical texts. Several passages (off the top of my head I think they were in Revelation) were simply back translated from the LAtin Vulgate, instead of from any extant Greek manuscript available at the time
It's also worth pointing out that I am not at all interested in 'which translation uses source texts that best accentuate the deity of Christ.' . I am not at all interested in glosses on the original text, even orthodox ones. I do not want a translation that begs the question. I simply want to know what the apostles, and those working with them, originally wrote. And I happen to think they highlighted the deity of Christ enough as it is!
