First Baptist Church of Farmersville
Wider World
A Publication Ministry of FBC FarmersvilleJuly 2011
Greetings!

OK, I think we all know that I can get a bit long-winded. The topic of this email involves a lot of technical detail, and I want you to have all of the detail that might interest you, but I don't want you to get lost in it all and miss the big picture. The next few paragraphs give you that big picture, and then the remainder of this email fleshes out as many of the details as I think make sense for this context.

Here's the big picture: If you are a reader of the NIV translation of the Bible (and many of you are), your Bible is being taken away from you and made unavailable to you. In its place, without notice to you, is being substituted a new, controversial translation.

The most popular modern English Bible translation is changing, and the changes are very controversial. The New International Version, first released in 1973 and then slightly modified in 1984, has been revised for 2011. The most prominent controversy surrounding the translation is its adoption of feminist-friendly gender-neutral translations of many passages.

Unfortunately, Zondervan plans to discontinue the NIV and replace it entirely with the NIV 2011, which will suddenly "become" the NIV. Shoppers intending to purchase the historic and acclaimed NIV will actually be purchasing this unproven and controversial "update." What subterfuge! Millions of people will think that they are purchasing the NIV that has earned the endorsement and support of the evangelical world, when they are actually purchasing this upstart impostor! Purchasing the NIV that you have come to trust may not be possible in the very near future.

I do not recommend that you use the NIV 2011 as your primary Bible for worship, teaching, personal Bible study, or scripture memorization. Neither do your fellow Southern Baptists across the nation, who overwhelmingly have supported a resolution against the NIV 2011 (I really recommend that you click the link and read it). The next time you shop for a Bible, I recommend that you purchase something else.

This edition of Wider World will be dedicated to explaining why this has happened, why the new translation is inferior, and how to make a good choice when you're choosing a favorite translation of the Bible.

 
Why the Change? What's Wrong with the Old NIV?
Well, a first question to ask might be "What's wrong with the OLD NIV?" Is there anybody alive in 2011 who could read the 1984 NIV and say, "Wow! That is some ANCIENT English being used in that translation! How can any modern person understand it?"

 

I seriously doubt it.

 

Yes, language changes. Texans living in 2011 read, write, and speak a far different version of the English language than did Londoners living in 1611. I'm perfectly willing to concede that the language can change so much in four centuries as to make a new translation of the Bible a practical and needed endeavor.

 

But we're not talking about four centuries. We're not even talking about four decades! As translations go, the NIV doesn't even have zits yet, and it's planning to retire. If there are no linguistic necessities forcing a revision of the NIV, then why produce a new translation?

 

A stack of US currency billsShow me the money.

 

Bibles have become big business in the United States of America and around the English-speaking world, providing over a half-a-billion dollars worth of sales even in lean years (source: Christianity Today). New versions generate additional sales, and not only of Bibles. Textbooks citing the old version have to be updated, generating textbook sales. New commentaries will emerge, interacting with the new translation. If a new translation is successful, then it is a cash cow for a publisher. And, of course, if Zondervan refuses to permit anyone to get their hands on the 1984 NIV any more, then they make it more likely that their new translation will be a successful one.

 

The 2011 NIV is a translation that we don't need. The publisher needs it; the people do not. Clive Hamilton famously said that people "buy things they don't need with money they don't have to impress people they don't like." Zondervan is certainly counting on the first part of Hamilton's statement to be true.

 

So, to get back to the first question, what's wrong with the old NIV? Apparently, only the fact that your copy is already paid for.  

What's Wrong with the New NIV?
Even if there is no good reason to have a new translation of the NIV, that wouldn't be a good reason for your pastor to send out a newsletter to oppose the NIV 2011. New translations come out all of the time, and I've never written anything like this to you before. But this situation is different from any other that I have encountered:
  1. This isn't just a "new translation." This is being substituted for the most popular English translation on the market and is being marketed under the same name.
  2. This new translation isn't just an update, but features a very controversial new direction in translation that has the effect of endorsing controversial theological agendas.
  3. The end effect is to try to foist over an inferior translation by leveraging the goodwill that the superior NIV has built among the churchgoing public for so many years.

Because it would be so easy for you to think that you are getting the same reliable NIV when you go to the book store, and because you would instead be getting an inferior and agenda-tilted counterfeit, I feel that I have a duty as your pastor to warn you about this.

 

Now, having explained why this is necessary, just what is wrong with the NIV 2011 translation? Bluntly stated, the NIV 2011 is the text of the Bible with portions of it neutered to make it more politically correct.

 

If you research this controversy online, you'll see a lot of discussion about gender-neutral translation. Simply put, there are a vast number of places in the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek original text of the Bible where the Holy Spirit inspired the authors to write the equivalent of our English word "he." In the NIV 2011, the translators have frequently chosen to avoid using the word "he" in favor of a word choice that obscures the gender of the word in the underlying biblical text.

 

It is likely that, in many of these cases, the "he" in question is a so-called "generic masculine" in which we might rightly presume that "he" actually includes men or women. The generic masculine is a feature shared in common by Hebrew, Greek, and English (as well as by a wide variety of other languages), so a basic principle of translation would suggest that we should translate Hebrew and Greek generic masculines into the corresponding English generic masculine. This is an easy enough translation question that every translation you've ever heard of for the past two thousand years has followed this approach.

 

But not the NIV 2011.

 

Does this really matter? So what if translators replace generic masculines with gender-neutral language? So long as the thought of the verse comes through, isn't it still a good translation?

 

Well, it does matter quite a bit. When you decide to start editing the Bible, it is difficult to anticipate the damage that you might be doing. An examination of one change in the NIV 2011 underscores this truth.

 

Consider Psalm 8:4-6, first in the original NIV:

 

What is man that you are mindful of him,

The son of man that you care for him?

You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings

And crowned him with glory and honor.

You made him ruler over the works of your hands;

You put everything under his feet:

 

Of course, there are a lot of masculine pronouns in those verses. The NIV 2011 took those as generic masculines and completely changed the translation of this passage. Now, in the NIV 2011, it reads:

 

What is mankind that you are mindful of them,

Human beings that you care for them?

You have made them a little lower than the angels

And crowned them with glory and honor.

You made them rulers over the works of your hands;

You put everything under their feet:

 

There you go! The passage is now entirely politically correct. The language is 100% gender-inclusive. No harm done, really, right? Not so fast. Did you know that Psalm 8 is quoted in Hebrews 2? In that passage, we are told that Psalm 8 is a prophecy related to the "Son of Man," Jesus Christ. The new NIV 2011 translation of Psalm 8 falsely makes it inapplicable to Jesus Christ. I'd say that the neutering of messianic prophecies in the Old Testament to please the politically correct language police is something that matters a whole lot.

 

This underscores an important principle of Bible translation: The translator probably doesn't comprehend the entirety of what God is saying in any individual passage. This is why any good translation should try as hard as it can to stick with translations that match the actual words inspired by God to be in the Bible.

 

Beware NIV 2011 imageActually, the gender-neutrality question is the symptom, not the problem. The real problem is that the NIV is following a philosophy of translation that shackles the word of God to the whims of godless political correctness. The NIV translation committee would tell you that they are merely trying to keep up with changes in the English language and are not trying to advance any agenda. If the language changes, so say the translators, then the translation must change. There are several problems with this approach.

 

First, the English language follows the Bible at least as much as the Bible follows the English language. The Bible is far-and-away the most popular book that has ever existed in English. Translators of a popular English translation of the Bible are causing linguistic change, not merely reacting to it.

 

David Crystal, with The Oxford English Dictionary, doesn't gush over the King James Version. He recently wrote an article complaining that people give the King James Version too much credit for its influence upon the English language. And yet even he, the naysayer, had to conclude his article by writing:

 

We find [the language of the KJV] appearing in such disparate worlds as nuclear physics, court cases, TV sitcoms, recipe books, punk rock lyrics, and video games, and being adapted in all kinds of imaginative ways to suit their new settings. The banking crisis produced Am I my Lehman Brothers' keeper? A political confrontation produced Bush is the fly in Blair's ointment. No other work has generated so many variations. The adaptations are legion. It is in this sense that the influence of the King James is without parallel.

 

So, a popular translation of the Bible like the NIV has a tremendous influence upon the English language. The translators of the NIV have to take responsibility for this fact. When they choose to embrace political correctness, their endorsement can tremendously accelerate the adoption of political correctness into the English language. They can't throw up their hands and say that they were powerless in the matter.

 

Second, the addition of new options in the English language is not the same as the abandonment of old options. Any number of new options have been proposed to replace generic masculines in English by those who are so politically correct as to be offended by this feature of the vast preponderance of languages. The cumbersome "he or she," the quirky "s/he," and the grammatically deviant singular "they" have been among the most popular approaches. The NIV 2011 has used the last alternative in several places, along with occasional contrivances like "that person" instead of "he."

 

Certainly, these kinds of changes are a part of the English language today, and yet the historic way of speaking is also still a part of common English. Does anybody really have trouble understanding the NIV 1984 because the language is too archaic? Is the average American today unable to understand a sentence like "What is man that you are mindful of him?" perfectly well. Of course not. The NIV does not have to change to keep up with modern English; it only has to change to keep up with the trendy English of the liberal elitist academy.

 

Third, when the changes to the language are agenda-driven, then the choice to follow the language is also driven by an agenda, whether the translators want to take responsibility for following that agenda or not. The CBT translators who have produced the NIV 2011 have repeatedly stated that, although there are many feminists on the translation committee and some who are not feminists, they have not allowed a feminist agenda to alter the translations that they have used. Rather, they say that they simply have to follow changes in the language. They have no choice!

 

Well, this is the camel's nose under the tent, if that is true. How long until this gender-neutral language forces the committee to something like this?

 

For God so loved the world that God gave God's only Child, so that everyone who believes in that Child may not perish but may have eternal life. (John 3:16, The New Testament and Psalms: An Inclusive Version)

 

It is a simple, undeniable fact. An enormous number of the people at work in English departments of leading universities are hostile toward the message of the Bible. They are the people who are proposing politically correct changes to the English language, and they are the people preparing the "data" which are being used by the NIV translators to decide how they have to modify the Bible to make it keep up with the times.

 

Where will these people try to take the English language. Are we so sure that the Bible can follow them down this pathway all the way to the end without compromising the message of the word of God?

 

The simple fact is that the original NIV passage listed above is no harder to understand than the NIV 2011 version of Psalm 8:4-6 listed above for any competent English speaker. The problem isn't that the old version is difficult for anybody to understand; the problem is that it offends some people. That's what political correctness is all about: Making sure nothing offends any liberal sensitivities.

 

It isn't a translator's job, however, to make sure that the Bible doesn't offend anybody. A translator's job is simply to make sure that a reader understands the Bible's words, and then to let the chips of offense fall where they may. The NIV translators seem to have forgotten that.

 


Word-for-Word or Thought-for-Thought?
Chart of major English Bible translations by translation philosophy.
So, if you aren't going to purchase the new NIV 2011, what Bible will you read? I recommend that you use as much of a word-for-word translation as you are able to read and comprehend. Depending upon your age and reading skills, any of the following could be a good translation for you (as well as several others not listed):

  1. The New American Standard Bible (from which I preach)
  2. The King James Version
  3. The English Standard Version
  4. The Holman Christian Standard Bible
  5. The New Living Translation
  6. The New King James Version

Translating even a simple document from one language to another can require that the translator make difficult choices. So much the more is this true for a deep, rich, complicated, important work like the Bible. Christ Himself has emphasized the importance of every letter and mark of the Bible in its original languages. Such is the responsibility of the translator, to preserve what Christ has declared as sacred!

Translating means dealing with words and with thoughts. The two are not unrelated, but neither are they the same. In Psalm 17:8, the literal Hebrew phrase "little man, daughter of the eye" is a good word-for-word translation, but is not very helpful to you or to me. A pure thought-for-thought translation would be "pupil of the eye," but that loses the poetic beauty of the passage, don't you think? The NASB (my favorite translation) goes with "the apple of the eye." With some idioms, using the actual word-for-word translation will prevent an English reader from understanding the thought of the passage.

Most Hebrew idioms are not so difficult to understand. To say that Cain's "face fell" in Genesis 4:5-6 is simply a Hebrew way for saying that Cain was displeased and disappointed. The NASB sticks with the Hebrew idiom, substituting "countenance" for "face" to imply that we're talking about the emotional expression on the face and not a physical malady. The Hebrew idiom, while not perhaps precisely what you or I would say in English, is perfectly understandable. Disappointment shows up on the face by making a smile fall down into a frown.

Word-for-word translations try to use English words that translate the actual Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek words of the Bible's original manuscripts, unless the actual words in the original languages would be misleading in English. Thought-for-thought translations (sometimes known as "dynamic equivalency" translations) operate according to a different standard. Even if the word-for-word translation is understandable in English, a thought-for-thought translator will ask, "Yeah, that's understandable in English, but are those the best, easiest, most natural words that we would use in English to express that thought?"

The risk of the word-for-word approach is evident: The translation might be hard to understand. What is the risk of the thought-for-thought approach? It may rely too much on the translator's ability to comprehend, and comprehend fully, the thought of any particular sentence in the Bible.

One of the more subtle examples is the original NIV's treatment of the Greek word σάρξ ('sarx'). Even the 1984 NIV is more of a thought-for-thought translation. The word σάρξ means "flesh" or "the muscular part of a human or animal body." In Greek philosophy and then in the New Testament, the concept of "the flesh" came to be used to signify the physical body with its base desires, as contrasted against the incorruptible component of a human being. The Greeks tended to refer to the νους ('nous' = "mind") or the ψυχή ('psyche') as the opposite of "the flesh." In the New Testament, in passages like Galatians 5, the contrast is between "the flesh" and "the spirit" (πνεύμα).

The NIV translates the word σάρξ with the phrase "sinful nature." OK, it is clear that this translation comprehends at least part of what the Bible means by "the flesh," but does it comprehend fully what it means? The Holy Spirit could have led Paul to write the Greek equivalent of "sinful nature," but instead he inspired Paul to connect this "sinful nature" with the actual flesh of our bodies. Doesn't this tell us something about how deeply ingrained into us our sin is? About the nature of the resurrection, even? I think it does, and it does so in a way that "sinful nature" cannot approximate. For such a critical theological term, it is dangerous to depart from the text of Scripture and use a term that embraces only a narrow slice of what the original word means.

By the way, I'm not trying to be unfair to the NIV translators. The fact is that they themselves agree with me, now at least. One of the few improvements in the 2011 version of the NIV is that they have backed away from "sinful nature" and are now using the better translation "flesh." Unfortunately, this one improvement hardly justifies the serious liberties that have been taken with other aspects of the biblical text in the 2011 NIV. I wish that they had taken the lesson they learned with regard to "sinful nature" and had applied it to the new mistakes that they are making!

So, to sum up, the benefit of a thought-for-thought translation is that it may wind up being easier to read. The danger is that it may sacrifice faithfulness to the meaning of the original text in order to do so. The Bible is of no benefit to you if you can't read it, but if you can easily read both a more word-for-word translation and a more thought-for-thought translation, you would do well to use a translation like the New American Standard Bible or another of the translations displayed further to the left on the picture at the beginning of this section.

 
I hope that this information has been helpful to you. If you are interested in learning more, I recommend that you check the list of links in the sidebar above. Few things are more important in the life of a believer than having a reliable translation of the Bible that you can trust.

 

Sincerely,
 

Bart Barber
First Baptist Church of Farmersville
 
In This Issue
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Read More about the NIV 2011 on the Internet for Yourself
Woman sitting under a tree using her computer.
The NIV 2011 controversy has received a great deal of attention both in print and online. Do you want to learn more? The following links should be helpful for you.

The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood has published a review of the NIV 2011, which is available here.

Denny Burk has made available online a rigorous scholarly critique of the NIV 2011 by New Testament scholar Vern S. Poythress. This article may be a bit overly technical for a lay audience, but it is available here.

A PDF scan of a fine article by SWBTS professor E. Earle Ellis is available here. Ellis is no longer living. His article was a response to the TNIV, a version attempted several years ago by the CBT. The TNIV was a commercial failure, which is one reason why the CBT is now packaging much of the bad TNIV content into the NIV and removing the "competition" of the beloved NIV in order to sell this new gender-modified version. Ellis's ideas are still relevant today.

Of course, there have been responses. The NIV Committee for Bible Translation has prepared a document detailing their translation choices. This is obviously a document in favor o the new translation.

A quick Google search will reveal for you a wide variety of blogs and other opinion pieces addressing the controversy, as well as newspapers and magazines covering the unfolding story. I recommend that you read about the matter fully.

After you're done reading all of it, the fact remains that this new translation has ventured onto uncertain and controversial ground. Why purchase such a translation when so many versions are available that are time-tested and are not surrounded by so much controversy?