Missouri Synod on 2011 NIV: "inappropriate ... to be generally recommended to the laity of our church."

I agree wholeheartedly with that paragraph, and could not have said it better.

When people can use a real translation, I am at a loss that anyone would use the NIV. It is like choosing McDonald’s when you could have gone to a steakhouse. That is something my kids might do now that I think about it.

Crossway, the publishers of the English Standard Version, couldn’t buy better advertising.

[jimfrank]

Crossway, the publishers of the English Standard Version, couldn’t buy better advertising.

Jim, you are right about that. We replaced the NIV with ESV, but our people are still hanging on to their old 1984 NIV.

The reason people liked the NIV was because it is simpler to understand and reads like other stuff in English. Even the ESV uses some antiquated ways of putting things, like “forsake me not” rather than “do not forsake me.” Who talks like that? But it still is the better choice.

Dave,

Isn’t the NASB a more technically accurate (some say woodenly) word for word translation into English than the KJ?

barring something at least as faithful and well-researched

I was just wondering on the basis of this part of your statement. It seems you are not impressed by any of the scholarship that might contradict or move beyond what was available and accomplished in 1611.

Interestingly, Don Carson said the NIV 2011 is the best current English translation.

Carson isn’t the strongest advocate of the complimentarian position. His support given to the NIV then would be spurious.

Huh? Carson isn’t “the strongest advocate of the complimentarian [sic] position” so “His support given to the NIV then would be spurious”? Hmm … That argument will need some development, I think.

But regardless of Carson’s view on complementarianism (which is actually pretty strong, if I recall correctly), his knowledge of Greek is fairly strong. And being fairly fluent in several different languages, he is also relatively knowledgeable about translation. So when you know Greek and know translation (which is two more things than most people know), it may be a challengeable view, but it certainly isn’t spurious.

Who knows why he said that, if in fact he said that. I would like to see the quote. As much as I like Carson, and I like him a lot, I can simply say this is a poor choice on his part. I didn’t mean that it is bogus that he claimed it. I meant it is a bogus claim.

The NIV was revised before as TNIV, (Today’s NIV) and that had an egalitarian bias. It was generally rejected and did not sell well, so it was pulled from the market.

I could live with this newest revision of NIV, but you have to ask “what’s next?” The TNIV example demonstrates where the higher up WANT to end up.

So when you use a translation like NIV, you are BUYING INTO A DIRECTION, a vector headed in a certain direction. If this point on the line is not too bad, but the way it is heading means the next point will even be further away, that is not a good thing. It is not just about this revision of NIV, but where NIV is heading.