English
Korean
Spanish
GRAPEVINE—Bible drill and speakers’ tournament participants will rely on either the King James Version or Holman Christian Standard Bible when they compete next spring in regional and statewide competition sponsored by the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention. The decision to drop the New International Version as one of the options resulted from concern that the 2011 NIV translation features extensive gender-neutral language left over from the controversial TNIV, published in 2005.
This shift in translation principles sets a potentially dangerous precedent in biblical interpretation, said SBTC church ministries associate Kenneth Priest, who announced the decision in a letter to pastors. After studying press releases from the NIV’s Committee on Biblical Translation and consulting with Southern Baptist scholars and the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, a recommendation was made against using the new NIV.
The 2011 NIV is an updated translation to both the 1984 edition of the NIV and the later TNIV, which flopped commercially. Messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention in Phoenix last June approved a resolution offered from the floor that discouraged use of the new NIV due to gender-neutral translation methodology.
The resolution criticized the alteration of hundred of verses, “erasing gender-specific details which appear in the original language,” adding that the 2011 NIV “has gone beyond acceptable translation standards.”
Since Biblica, which holds the copyright for the NIV, will no longer produce copies of the popular 1984 edition, orders of new Bibles used in drills would rely on the updated version. Priest said he and other state convention leaders would explore whether to expand to a third option other than the NIV in 2013.
The Baptist Faith and Message confessional statement supports complementarianism—the view that the Bible teaches distinct roles in the home and church for male and female, both bearing God’s image and equal in nature and worth.
“Feminists who claim that women can be pastors and elders will find much to their liking in the 2011 NIV because it tilts the scales in favor of their view at several key verses,” observed Denny Burk, associate professor of biblical studies at Boyce College and a former Criswell College professor.
The new NIV also changes “father” to “parent” even though the Hebrew text clearly refers to a father. In other instances, changes diminish the role of the father in Israelite society, Burk argued. “These new NIV verses are not translated as accurately as possible, but they are consistent with the new NIV’s practice of removing male-oriented details of meaning from the text of the Bible.”
A desire to avoid the words “man” and “son” prompts changing Psalm 8:4 from “What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?” to read, “What is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?”
Noting use of the same phrase in Hebrews 2:8, Burk wrote that “the connection to the New Testament and to Christ is obscured with the new NIV, as it removes male components of meaning from verse after verse.”
Changes to “he” and “him” to “they” and “them” account for the largest category of changes, but causes a difference in meaning. Burk said, “Changing singulars to plurals removes the emphasis in a verse on individual, personal relationship with God and specific individual responsibility for one’s choices and actions.”
While he commends the translation team for changing 933 places where gender-neutral translations were used in the TNIV, Burk said the vast majority of problematic gender renderings from the TNIV are retained in the updated NIV. According to a study by CBMW, 2,766 gender language revisions remain from TNIV to NIV 2011. The complete analysis may be viewed at cbmw.org.
Southern Baptists serving on CBMW include Danny Akin and Daniel Heimbach from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary; Mary Kassian, R. Albert Mohler and Bruce Ware from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; and Dorothy Patterson from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
The SBTC’s decision is in line with the findings of the CBMW, Priest said.
“The strongest consideration in weighing the 2011 NIV should be its faithfulness to translate the Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic biblical manuscripts into readable modern language without regarding social or doctrinal trends.”
Louisiana Baptist Convention and Georgia Baptist Convention leaders indicated they are also removing the NIV as a translation used in Bible Drill and Speakers’ Tournament.
