By T.L. Hubeart Jr.
© 2011 by T.L. Hubeart Jr.
The
year 2011 was a time when the New
International Version of the Bible had a subtle makeover, one which many
Christians probably missed unless they were paying close attention or, like
myself, stumbled on the information. In February of 2011, I saw a
blog post from Logos.com that noted that “Zondervan recently published a
brand new edition of the NIV, replacing both the 1984 NIV and the TNIV.”
That caused me to do some digging and produce a series of posts for my own blog
during that
month, and it seemed a good idea to bring most of that information together
and make it available here.
For
those who may not know or remember the history of the NIV after its
publication--we can forgo for the purposes of this post its history up to that
point and the criticisms
leveled
against its now decommissioned incarnation, including some very hard-to-dismiss
critiques from Leland Ryken--, it would be well to recap. It was in 1995[1] that a full
revamp of the NIV appeared, called the New
International Version Inclusive Language Edition and published only in
the United Kingdom. The problems with this revision were noted
early by the Trinitarian Bible Society, but a March 1997 piece in World
Magazine by Susan Olasky threw the issue into
high relief with this opening:
"Say goodbye to the generic
he, man, brothers, or mankind. Make way for people, person, brother
and sister, and humankind. By the year 2000 or 2001, if the 15-member Committee
on Bible Translation (CBT)--the NIV's controlling body--has its way, the 35
percent of American Bible buyers who prefer the NIV will not be able to buy a
new copy of the version they trust."
Writing
in Christianity Today a few months later, Doug LeBlanc
quotes the outraged Kenneth
Barker, NIV translator and secretary of the Committee on Bible Translation
(CBT), saying he would "never consent to another interview by Susan Olasky or anyone else connected to World
magazine," on the grounds that they had "simply done too much
unwarranted damage to the NIV, the CBT, Zondervan, and IBS [the International
Bible Society]." However, Mr. LeBlanc reported, the IBS responded to
"hundreds of complaints about proposed gender-related revisions to the New
International Version" by canceling all its revision plans.
Of course that seems to have been a temporary truce, judging from the fact that
TNIV, or Today's New International Version, had its New Testament published in 2002 and a
complete Bible in 2005. To say that it was greeted with something less than
acclaim would be quite
the
understatement,
despite heavy
promotion. It too was condemned for "gender-neutral alterations."
Nevertheless, it did find a loyal
readership,
which are apparently going to be left high and dry by the newest NIV, since Biblica, the "worldwide publisher and copyright
holder" over NIV/TNIV, has announced
that they "will not be releasing any new products in either the 1984 or
TNIV texts after the updated NIV has been published."
Oh,
but have they ever learned their lesson, they now say. Of course they did
say they learned their lesson back in 1997 when Dr. Kenneth Barker, NIV
translator, signed the Colorado Springs
Guidelines alongside Dr. James Dobson. And in 2002, when the
CBT's Ronald Youngblood said, "The purpose of CBT is to translate the
Bible into contemporary language....We are not catering to any group. We do not
have any kind of social agenda." But now they really get it. From
Christianity Today's Live Blog, Sept. 1, 2009:
"In announcing a major revision of the New
International Version (NIV) of the Bible, Biblica (formerly
the International Bible Society and Send The Light, or
IBS-STL) CEO Keith Danby said decisions surrounding the release of the NIV
inclusive language edition and the 2002 revision, Today's New International
Version (TNIV), were mistakes.
"'In 1997, IBS announced that it was forgoing all plans to publish an
updated NIV following criticism of the NIV inclusive language edition (NIVi) published in the United Kingdom. Quite frankly, some
of the criticism was justified and we need to be brutally honest about the
mistakes that were made,' Danby said. 'We fell short of the trust that was
placed in us. We failed to make the case for revisions and we made some
important errors in the way we brought the translation to publication. We also
underestimated the scale of the public affection for the NIV and failed to
communicate the rationale for change in a manner that reflected that
affection.'"
Of
course the list of "mistakes" the CEO then provides might give the
objective reader pause:
"'The first mistake was the NIVi,' Danby said. 'The second was
freezing the NIV. The third was the process of handling the TNIV.'"
Call
me cynical, but this makes about as much sense to me as a manufacturing
company's CEO announcing, "Let's be brutally honest: our first mistake was
to build our factory in Anytown. The second was
moving our factory from Anytown. And the third
was thinking we could build it anywhere but Anytown."
One could reasonably say either that it was a mistake to go forward with the
NIVI and TNIV--or that it was a mistake to react to their poor
presentation by freezing the NIV text--but saying both classes of
decision were mistakes, especially while trying a third
time to get gender-inclusive language into the text, is at best
rhetorically incoherent. (One could also consider it risible to term such a
statement "brutally honest," but I want to be as charitable as I can
here.)
Zondervan CEO Moe Girkins is also quoted as saying
that "Whatever its strengths were, the TNIV divided the evangelical
Christian community," so "as we launch this new NIV, we will
discontinue putting out new products with the TNIV....We are correcting the
mistakes in [sic] the past." (Did she possibly mean "the mistakes of
the past"? Unless, of course, you can borrow the DeLorean from Back to the Future to actually
correct mistakes in the past!) She further said, "Being as
transparent as possible is part of that."
Now as I said, the quotes immediately above date from September 2009 and
possibly a few things have not remained quite the same in the intervening
months (including Moe Girkins' status, since she's
now the former Zondervan CEO--hmmm). Still, I think the claims of
being "as transparent as possible" are rendered ludicrous by the
planned disappearance of the NIVs in print now and their replacement by an identically
entitled version. Um, no--"transparent," or at least more
transparent, would be what was done in 2005 with the TNIV, where you had a
clear distinction between two separate publications. As stated in TNIV's
"A Word to the Reader" (emphasis mine):
"There is a sense in which the work of
translating the Bible is never finished. This very fact has prompted the
Committee to engage in an ongoing review of the text of the NIV with the
assistance of many other scholars. The chief goal of this review has always
been to bring the text of the NIV abreast of contemporary biblical
scholarship and of shifts in English idiom and usage. Already in 1978 and
again in 1984 various corrections and revisions to the NIV text were made. In
the TNIV the Committee offers to the reading public the latest fruits of its
review."
That's
plain enough, and the "reading public" had a clear choice between NIV
and TNIV (and it's fairly obvious what they chose). So now the public is going
to be given what the publishers think they should have,
a new product under an old name, in pursuit of being "as transparent as
possible."
They'll also be pacified with talking
points such as "In this update, about 95% of the text remains exactly
the same as the 1984 NIV that it replaces." (Meaningless
statistic. You could just as well say Exodus 20:1-26 are more
than 95 percent the same between a standard KJV and the so-called "Wicked Bible" of
1631; it's just those three little letters in Exodus 20:14 that are
missing in the latter.)
And "the CBT has a larger responsibility to the original NIV charter that
requires them to monitor developments in biblical scholarship and changes in
English usage and to reflect these changes in periodic updates to the
text." (Oh, really? So why did it take you a quarter
century to determine that this "larger responsibility" obliged
you to give the new text the old text's name? Why is it that somehow you missed
this "larger responsibility" when you brought out TNIV as a separate
edition, "the latest fruits" of your NIV revisions?)
Part
of the stated rationale from Biblica, CBT, and
Zondervan appeals to a “mandate” that supposedly demands periodic revisions of
the NIV. In the preface to the new 2011 text, for instance, we are told that
"The work of translating the Bible is never
finished. As good as they are, English translations
must be regularly updated so that they will continue to communicate accurately
the meaning of God’s Word. Updates are needed in order to reflect the latest
developments in our understanding of the biblical world and its languages and
to keep pace with changes in English usage. Recognizing, then, that the NIV
would retain its ability to communicate God’s Word accurately only if it were
regularly updated, the original translators established The Committee on Bible
Translation (CBT)....In obedience to its mandate, the committee has issued
periodic updates to the NIV. An initial revision was released in 1984. A more
thorough revision process was completed in 2005, resulting in the separately
published TNIV. The updated NIV you now have in your hands builds on both the
original NIV and the TNIV and represents the latest effort of the committee to
articulate God’s unchanging Word in the way the original authors might have
said it had they been speaking in English to the global English-speaking
audience today."
The
idea that the NIV text was always going to keep changing due to some “mandate,”
and that the older text was going to be phased out--especially the latter
idea--, seems to me a relatively new development. Although I am fairly well
read in the history of Bible translations, I remembered nothing like this being
claimed before now, so I spent some time looking for some kind of historical provenance for any such
“mandate.” A User's Guide to Bible Translations by David Dewey,
published in 2004 by InterVarsity Press, gives
not the slightest hint of a suggestion that the NIV text itself (as opposed
to separate editions like TNIV) is expected to be changed. Most interesting of
all is the book God's Word in Our Language: The Story of the New
International Version, written by Richard Kevin Barnard and published by
"Lamplighter Books" (a division of Zondervan) in 1989, an extended
sympathetic look at the making of NIV from its inspiration from the efforts of
engineer Howard Long
to its publication, including quotes from many of the translators. Surely, here
would be some kind of mention of this “mandate” had it existed before
the 21st century, right? Well, in fact, no. And in fact the
so-called 1984 “initial revision” cited in NIV 2011’s preface isn’t
even recorded in Barnard’s book!
I'm
not saying, of course, that there was no changed edition of 1984. But I
think we can fairly conclude that it was relatively minor, perhaps concerned
with the tidying-up of typos and small inconsistencies that had been found in
the 1978 complete NIV Bible. Had it been anything more, we surely would have
seen it included in Barnard's 1989 account. I have to suspect that the
importance of 1984 is being rather overemphasized (to put it kindly) in NIV
2011’s preface, in order to bolster the idea—unsupported, as far as I can see,
by contemporaneous documents—that the NIV text was always going to be
changed on a regular basis.
At
least the New American Standard's revision clearly labels it as "New
American Standard Bible, 1995 update" to distinguish it from the 1977
version--which is by the way still
available! Now that is "transparent." In contrast, I’d
submit that what Biblica/CBT/Zondervan is doing
regarding the NIV 2011, rationalize it as they will, does
not meet this standard. The withdrawal of the old NIV text despite
previous promises to keep it in print, and the corporate-speak of Mr. Danby and
Ms. Girkins quoted above, leave a particularly bad
taste behind.
When
“disco was king”
Although
I am certainly no fan of the NIV, and never have been, I have a certain sympathy for the people who have trusted it for so
long and who are now getting a sort of "New
Coke"-style switcheroo, not because they want it but because someone
else decides that's what they should have. In 2005, I wrote a satire pretending to be
the work of an author writing against the “NIV Only” position (lampooning the “KJV Only”
name-calling of James R. White), in which I included this tongue-in-cheek
passage:
"However, as refreshing and different as the
NIV once was, its English is not the English that we speak in the 21st century.
The NIV was translated in another time, a day in which disco was king—when Fonzie was one of the most popular characters on
television—a time when Jimmy Carter was president. Gold chains and platform
shoes were everywhere. Leonid Brezhnev led the Soviet Union with an iron fist.
Music lovers listened to the Bee Gees on vinyl discs and 8-track tapes. The
NIV, in short, is an analog-age Bible still being used in our digital
world."
I
meant the reader to see that as ludicrous, since no one needs a translator to
understand Happy Days, or a Chaucer-like glossary to comprehend the NIV.
Unfortunately, in hindsight, that looks like it could have been a paragraph
from the promotional materials for this new-new-NEW NIV publication.
Surely
many who go into a Christian bookstore to buy a new copy of the NIV won't even
notice that what they purchased two years ago and what they walked out with ten
minutes ago are not the same book.[2] But regarding those that will, consider a November
2010 post by Trevin Wax giving his reflections on
the 2011 NIV. This gentleman, incidentally, is not necessarily put out
by "gender-neutral translations" and says he has read through TNIV
often. But he goes on to make this observation:
"The problem I see with the NIV 2011 is that
the publisher (Zondervan) seems to be putting churches and church leaders in a
position where they are forced to make a choice. A few years ago, upon
considering the resistance from some evangelicals toward the TNIV, Zondervan
assured Bible-readers that the 1984 NIV would remain available. But no such
assurance is given now. In fact, the publisher has expressly indicated the
desire for the NIV 2011 to replace both the original NIV and the TNIV."
Mr.
Wax notes that "most evangelical churches continue to use the 1984 NIV as
their common text," but that this usage will probably start to fade because
of the phasing-out of the current NIV and its replacement with NIV-2011:
"Many faithful NIV readers will not overlook
the differences between the original NIV and this recent revision. I don’t
foresee pastors and churches quickly updating all their literature and
switching to the new NIV in the coming decade. Since the old NIV will
eventually be out of print, pastors and churches will be forced to make a
choice. Either make the move to the NIV 2011 or move to another translation
altogether."
Nor
was the NIV the only modern translation getting changes made this year; it also
was announced that the English Standard Version would be getting what the
president of Crossway, Lane T. Dennis, called
“a small number of word changes” in new editions of this version.
This translation, which came out in 2001, already
had a previous set of revisions made tacitly in 2007 which
were documented by Rick Mansfield
on his blog “This Lamp.”
Given
such developments, NIV and ESV readers might in fact want to think twice about
binding their new editions in anything as permanent as genuine cowhide or
French Morocco leather, given the rate of change being pushed on their version.
Maybe something in biodegradable plastic would be more appropriate? Or possibly
it's even going too far to commit the text to paper; perhaps each reader should
be issued an e-book with instant Internet updates, so that the Bible can be
changed on the fly by a consortium of scholars. (One can even imagine a
betrothed couple of the future: "But John, I can't sleep with you
before we're married; the Bible says we're to avoid sexual immorality--at least
it used to say that before the latest download....OK, my bad, should we
do it at your place or mine?")
Perhaps that's a bit silly, but truly, isn't there something that Christians
should find deeply offensive about the idea of the Bible--traditionally
considered by Christians, on the basis of
what it says about itself, to be God's unchanging Word--being so mutable,
so much like the morning paper or even like those historical documents that Winston Smith in Orwell's
novel 1984 was perpetually rewriting?
What would Paul the Apostle and the believers of his day have thought of this?
What about those for most of Christian history, such as the folks of the Middle Ages, for whom having a complete copy of the Bible
would have been an almost unimaginable luxury? What of those martyrs like William Tyndale
who gave their blood to put the Word of God into as many hands as possible?
What would they have said about a Christian church with what Baptist minister David Dewey aptly called
an "almost immoral" range of choices in English translations?
Wouldn’t
they have found it bizarre—maybe even shocking—that one translation had to be
updated after only a quarter century and another after a mere decade--with
their revisions falling in the same year as the four-hundredth
anniversary of another translation (the KJV) that, strangely enough, a lot of
people still understand?
[1] For purposes of
this discussion, I am also intentionally bypassing the derivative New
International Reader's Version (or NIrV),
based on the original NIV but written
in simpler language, which appeared in the mid 1990s.
[2] Another thing
to consider: all the quotations from the NIV in the last three decades, in
biblical commentaries and elsewhere, that are going to cause confusion as
future readers see different wording in their 2011 NIVs and, probably not
knowing the history of their texts, assume the citation they're seeing is inaccurate.
(For my own part, except on parts of my site like my
recently revised John 1:18
page where I specify which NIV edition I am quoting, it can be taken for
granted that I’m quoting from the 1978/1984 NIV.)