It was suggested that I comment on the Today's New International Version of the Bible. News stories can be found about it on CNN, USA Today, Washington Times, or you can go to their actual website, www.tniv.info.

The idea is, that the people who produced the New International Version, or NIV of the Bible, have produced something called the TNIV, the Today's New International Version of the Bible. Basically, it makes some minor linguistic changes to NIV, to make it more contemporary. Or that's the idea at least. What are some of the changes it makes? "With child" changes to "pregnant". "sons" changes to "children". "...decreed, but..." changes to "...decreed. But...". "he who" changes to "whoever". "Jews" changes to "Jewish leaders". You get the idea. The big thing are the gender neutral bits. But the makers of the thing do justify it, by saying that the correct translation actually is gender neutral, and that in the past, because of whatever biases, it was not tranlated properly. I don't know if you buy their argument or not. A lot of people don't. But it seems to me, you'd have to be a Greek scholar before you even began to be qualified to judge their translation.

Some people are happy, some people are outraged, some are going to switch to the King James Version cuz of this. What do I think? Well...I'm not a Christian, so it doesn't make a whole lot of difference to me. If they want to produce this one, and if people want to buy it....by all means. Some people might think it's the dumbing down of the Bible. Well, maybe. Maybe not. And does it really matter? What is the Bible? A document, or a work of poetry? Some would say both. I say, it's the content that matters. And the TNIV is not fundamentally changing the content. At least I don't think so, but I'm not Christian...correct me if I'm wrong. To me, if you want to read the poetry, go ahead. I mean, they're still going to sell the NIV. And then there's the King James one. Really, if you REALLY want to read the real stuff...learn classical Greek and read the original.

So, if they want to make it, and if people want to buy it, good for them. It's not like there isn't a lot of choice out there. You don't like the TNIV, buy something else!

Actually, they argue that's it's not "gender neutral" but rather, "Gender accurate"

LMBP

Oh yeah, my mistake. Doesn't change my argument though.

Calvin

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