“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 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.”
Danby said it was also a mistake to stop revisions on the NIV. “We shackled the NIV to the language and scholarship of a quarter century ago, thus limiting its value as a tool for ongoing outreach throughout the world,” he said.
“Whatever its strengths were, the TNIV divided the evangelical Christian community,” said Zondervan president Moe Girkins. “So as we launch this new NIV, we will discontinue putting out new products with the TNIV.”
“We are correcting the mistakes in the past,” Girkins said. “Being as transparent as possible is part of that. This decision was made by the board in the last 10 days.” She said the transparency is part of an effort to overhaul the NIV “in a way that unifies evangelicalism.”
“The first mistake was the NIVi,” Danby said. “The second was freezing the NIV. The third was the process of handling the TNIV.”
I was at WORLD when we broke the story of the TNIV’s neutered translation, and, oh, did we get grief for criticizing it. It’s gratifying that Zondervan is now, at least in part, agreeing with us.
On the other hand, this account of the upcoming edition of the NIV, the fourth, does not sound too promising. The real problem with the NIV approach is its presumption of explaining what the translators think the words mean, rather than rendering the words accurately, even when they are ambiguous in the original languages. Also its flat style.
I’ll stick with my ESV, especially the new Lutheran Study Bible that has now been released! (I don’t have mine yet, but I hope to get one when I go to the CPH board meeting next week! If anyone has one, please report.)
HT: Joe Carter
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