By Tammi Reed Ledbetter, Special to the Message
GRAPEVINE, Texas – 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.
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 Kenneth Priest, Southern Baptists of Texas Convention church ministries associate, who announced the decision in a letter to Texas pastors.
Louisiana Baptist Convention and Georgia Baptist Convention leaders indicated they also are removing the NIV as a translation used in Bible Drill and Speakers’ Tournament.
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 because of 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.”
For example, 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?”
Changes to “he” and “him” to “they” and “them” account for the largest category of changes, but causes a difference in meaning. said Denny Burk of Boyce College.
“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,” Burk said.
While he said 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.
“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 Priest in a letter to the editor of the Southern Baptist Texan.
Reprinted with permission of the SB Texan.