The New International Version of the bible was on course to become the new standard English translation; until, in an act of incredible hubris and folly, the publishers, Zondervan, decided to tinker with it and keep tinkering with it. Not, one might add, in the interests of greater accuracy, but to make it “gender neutral”. But “gender neutrality” is not a principle of text criticism, nor of biblical theology, but a principle of the modern political movement referred to as “political correctness”. So the publisher has acted to corrupt the translation in the interests of a modern political lobby – an incredible thing to do. It went down about as well as you might expect; and I have written here about the story.
This week I came across an interesting blog post entitled “Farewell NIV”.
The version that many grew up reading has finally ridden off into the sunset, never to return. Zondervan has phased it out, buried it, and replaced it with something else.
Many people denied that a significant change had taken place, and tried to act like the Bible being sold now as the NIV is indeed the NIV they grew up with. That myth was sustainable for a while, but eventually it just didn’t work. This year many Christian schools finally dropped the NIV, and replaced it with something else. Even AWANA was forced to make the change. …
[This] is a FAQ guide to the NIV, with an explanation for why churches and ministries are dropping it:
Why did so many churches and schools change their translation this year?
Because Zondervan, the company that makes the NIV, stopped publishing it last year. It was widely used in churches and schools, and this changed forced those that used to find a new translation.
What do you mean they stopped publishing it? I see the NIV still for sale in book stores.
A brief history of the NIV: Translated in 1984, it quickly became one of the most popular versions, especially in schools. Then in 2002 Zondervan released an update (TNIV), which went over as well as New Coke, and the beloved NIV was resurrected. This time Zondervan learned from their errors, and released an update that they called the NIV2011, and for one year they sold both it and the NIV. But with a name like NIV2011, shelf-life was obviously not in view, and last year they simply dropped the old and beloved NIV, and then shrewdly dropped the “2011” from the updated one. In short, they pulled a switcheroo. What you see on shelves today is the new version which is sold and marketed as the NIV.
How is the NIV on the shelves now different from the one I’ve been reading for 20 years?
There have been deniers about the demise of the NIV. Many people have tried to hold onto the idea that the new one is the same as the old. After all, they have the same names, so how could they be that different? But the more people have tried to use the new one, the more the changes are evident.
Here are the stats: 40% of verses have been changed from the ’84 edition of the NIV. The stat that Zondervan gives is that 95% of the Bible remains unchanged. I assume they are counting words and not verses, but even so I’m not sure how they got that number. When you consider individual words, the new version is 9% new. That might not seem like a lot, but in schools and with curriculum, verses are what is important, and that means that 4 out of 10 passages needed to be updated.
The whole post is worth reading, and makes me deeply sad. I have used the NIV since my first days as a believer. I too feel loss.
But who can now trust the “new NIV”, under whatever marketing name it is produced? Who will trust any translation labelled “NIV”?
This sort of thing should not happen. The author is quite right to say that Zondervan have destroyed the NIV; because, since you can’t buy it, and none of us want the TNIV (or whatever they call it), it is effectively dead.
On a humorous note, old copies of the Gideons’ bible may suddenly become rather valuable!
I cannot avoid feeling that Zondervan have not acted with integrity. It pains me to say this, since I know otherwise only good things about them. But you don’t address a real question of the utmost urgency — is this a corrupt version? — by the sort of “switcheroo” tactics that have been employed. No: to do that is to railroad opposition; it is the kind of tactics used by lobby groups to force unpopular measures on a democracy which is denied the opportunity to vote.
Very, very sad. I imagine we will all use the ESV instead now. But I preferred the old NIV.