NIV1984, TNIV, or NIV2011? The winner: ESV?
I have been an ardent proponent of NIV1984 for years. I recognize that there are some verses mis-translated (as there are in every translation) but for me this has been the go-to translation for my devotional reading and most of my study for years.
(NASB is my backup plan from a deep-study perspective and ESV is my backup from a devotional perspective. I also enjoy NLT and The Message when I'm looking for pure readability and am prepared to deal with the interpretation that comes with it.)
The NIV Study Bible (NIV1984) that I got in college was worn out once, replaced with a duct-tape cover, and then when that wore out my wife very generously arranged to have it rebound. I love that Bible.
Then along came TNIV. Can you say "New Coke"? Can you say "Beta Videocassette"? It never caught on -- in fact in my conversations and reading it appeared to be completely ignored (I'm talking from a reading/using/studying perspective -- lots of people argued about it). People didn't agree with the approach to gender language and they left it on the bookshelf in the bookstore until the bookstore returned them to the publisher! Epic fail. I'm sure Zondervan lost big-time there.
Don't take me wrong. I like Zondervan. I want them to succeed! But because we live in a free market and TNIV was exposed early on in terms of some of its biases ... nobody bought it and NIV1984 continued alive and well.
The difficulty from Zondervan's perspective (and here I'm speculating) is that there is pretty good market saturation with NIV1984. There have been over 300 million copies sold over the years (am I right in thinking it's the best-selling version ever after KJV? Maybe even including KJV?). And when every evangelical home in USA/Canada has 3-4 on their shelf and every evangelical church (yes, I'm exaggerating - work with me here...) has pew racks filled with them ... well, sales start to slow down. Now Zondervan has a new translation they are chomping at the bit to sell, but nobody is buying. They own a name that has become as ubiquitous as Xerox in the photocopy world and Coke in the soft drink world. Why not make the best of the two?! So in what appears to me to be a decision motivated by marketing, they take the TNIV (remember the one nobody wants?) and change back to the 1984 version on less than 1% of the change, come up with a new way of saying less than 8% of the verses, and call it NIV. Obviously the hope is to use the trusted name of NIV but introduce something that ... well ... the free market already indicated pretty resoundingly we didn't want!
Note: I'm not making up the statistics. See here and here. 60% of the verses in NIV1984 are the same as NIV2011. But more than 90% of the verses that were in TNIV are identical in NIV2011. Less than 1% of the changes introduced by TNIV were reverted back to NIV1984 and less than 8% of the changes introduced by TNIV were changed to something new.
NIV2011 is the TNIV with a few of the verses changed. NIV2011 is much closer to TNIV than it is to NIV1984.
Now here's MY deal. I'm a complementarian when it comes to gender roles. For that reason I don't particularly like a lot of the changes which seem to favor an egalitarian position. But I could live with NIV2011 if it were the only thing out there. The thing is, Zondervan has a version that has gained the trust of millions upon millions of English speakers. It's called the NIV and it was first published in 1984.
And Zondervan is no longer going to publish anything else using the NIV1984 version. (Search for "current NIV" on this page.)
WHY?! You've got a Bible people love. Despite statements to the contrary, NIV1984 is in the English idiom that *I* use. (When I'm memorizing in the NIV1984 if I'm unsure of the exact wording most of the time I am able to just say what the verse means in my own words and ... cha-ching! I got it word perfect!) If you want to make a change, do it. But why do you have to take away the version that I and some 300 million others use?!
(Yes, I recognize it was 300 million Bibles sold and not 300 million people -- it's hyperbole. Work with me... :-) )
I'm a Bible teacher in middle school. I want my kids to memorize their verses in NIV1984. I don't want them to memorize in NIV2011. Period. (Just to be clear, if their parents make a specific request then I'm open to other translations and even other languages.) But if Zondervan has decided that NIV1984 is obsolete then I'm dooming my students to knowing all their verses in a version that is no longer available 20 years from now. That makes me cringe, both for my own children (who already have many chapters memorized in NIV1984) as well as my middle school students.
But you know what? It doesn't make me decide to go out and buy NIV2011 Bibles for my children or my students. A rose by any other name is still a rose, but calling a tulip a rose doesn't make it so... If NIV1984 is unavailable for future purchase then suddenly my own devotional backup version (ESV) starts to sound very appealing...
Zondervan, I hope you are listening. I can understand the point of view of wanting to update the language -- I don't agree, but I can understand it. (Correcting the mistakes without forcing the inclusive language issue would have been welcome...) Reverting from the name TNIV back to NIV seems pretty close to the edge of deceptive (particularly after the earlier commitment to freeze the NIV), but, hey, you own the name and so who am I to complain? But why oh why do you have to make the NIV1984 go away?! It just smacks of sour grapes to me -- "I want you to read a version of the Bible that agrees with my theology and so (since I own the ball) I'm going to take my ball and go home." Rather than reducing the controversy started with the NIVi and the TNIV you're just declaring a winner ... and running off anyone who doesn't agree with you.
Please ... you publish lots of different versions! (Looking on your products page for just the briefest of moments I see NIrV, NRSV, KJV, and NASB in addition to the NIV.) Just leave NIV84 in print. You don't like the confusion over names? (Oops - too late! You should have thought of that before releasing NIV2011 under the "NIV" name.) No problem - call it TIV (Traditional International Version) or NIoV/OIV (Old International Version, of course!) (that was a joke) or some such thing. I would probably avoid "Traditional New International Version" if you're wanting to avoid controversy, but maybe that's just me... :-)
But please don't leave my generation of verse-memorizers and Bible readers high and dry. It doesn't hurt Zondervan to have another similar-sounding version name out there. Shoot - it may even contribute to INCREASED sales!
We like you, Zondervan! We want to buy from you! Don't drive us away!
(NASB is my backup plan from a deep-study perspective and ESV is my backup from a devotional perspective. I also enjoy NLT and The Message when I'm looking for pure readability and am prepared to deal with the interpretation that comes with it.)
The NIV Study Bible (NIV1984) that I got in college was worn out once, replaced with a duct-tape cover, and then when that wore out my wife very generously arranged to have it rebound. I love that Bible.
Then along came TNIV. Can you say "New Coke"? Can you say "Beta Videocassette"? It never caught on -- in fact in my conversations and reading it appeared to be completely ignored (I'm talking from a reading/using/studying perspective -- lots of people argued about it). People didn't agree with the approach to gender language and they left it on the bookshelf in the bookstore until the bookstore returned them to the publisher! Epic fail. I'm sure Zondervan lost big-time there.
Don't take me wrong. I like Zondervan. I want them to succeed! But because we live in a free market and TNIV was exposed early on in terms of some of its biases ... nobody bought it and NIV1984 continued alive and well.
The difficulty from Zondervan's perspective (and here I'm speculating) is that there is pretty good market saturation with NIV1984. There have been over 300 million copies sold over the years (am I right in thinking it's the best-selling version ever after KJV? Maybe even including KJV?). And when every evangelical home in USA/Canada has 3-4 on their shelf and every evangelical church (yes, I'm exaggerating - work with me here...) has pew racks filled with them ... well, sales start to slow down. Now Zondervan has a new translation they are chomping at the bit to sell, but nobody is buying. They own a name that has become as ubiquitous as Xerox in the photocopy world and Coke in the soft drink world. Why not make the best of the two?! So in what appears to me to be a decision motivated by marketing, they take the TNIV (remember the one nobody wants?) and change back to the 1984 version on less than 1% of the change, come up with a new way of saying less than 8% of the verses, and call it NIV. Obviously the hope is to use the trusted name of NIV but introduce something that ... well ... the free market already indicated pretty resoundingly we didn't want!
Note: I'm not making up the statistics. See here and here. 60% of the verses in NIV1984 are the same as NIV2011. But more than 90% of the verses that were in TNIV are identical in NIV2011. Less than 1% of the changes introduced by TNIV were reverted back to NIV1984 and less than 8% of the changes introduced by TNIV were changed to something new.
NIV2011 is the TNIV with a few of the verses changed. NIV2011 is much closer to TNIV than it is to NIV1984.
Now here's MY deal. I'm a complementarian when it comes to gender roles. For that reason I don't particularly like a lot of the changes which seem to favor an egalitarian position. But I could live with NIV2011 if it were the only thing out there. The thing is, Zondervan has a version that has gained the trust of millions upon millions of English speakers. It's called the NIV and it was first published in 1984.
And Zondervan is no longer going to publish anything else using the NIV1984 version. (Search for "current NIV" on this page.)
WHY?! You've got a Bible people love. Despite statements to the contrary, NIV1984 is in the English idiom that *I* use. (When I'm memorizing in the NIV1984 if I'm unsure of the exact wording most of the time I am able to just say what the verse means in my own words and ... cha-ching! I got it word perfect!) If you want to make a change, do it. But why do you have to take away the version that I and some 300 million others use?!
(Yes, I recognize it was 300 million Bibles sold and not 300 million people -- it's hyperbole. Work with me... :-) )
I'm a Bible teacher in middle school. I want my kids to memorize their verses in NIV1984. I don't want them to memorize in NIV2011. Period. (Just to be clear, if their parents make a specific request then I'm open to other translations and even other languages.) But if Zondervan has decided that NIV1984 is obsolete then I'm dooming my students to knowing all their verses in a version that is no longer available 20 years from now. That makes me cringe, both for my own children (who already have many chapters memorized in NIV1984) as well as my middle school students.
But you know what? It doesn't make me decide to go out and buy NIV2011 Bibles for my children or my students. A rose by any other name is still a rose, but calling a tulip a rose doesn't make it so... If NIV1984 is unavailable for future purchase then suddenly my own devotional backup version (ESV) starts to sound very appealing...
Zondervan, I hope you are listening. I can understand the point of view of wanting to update the language -- I don't agree, but I can understand it. (Correcting the mistakes without forcing the inclusive language issue would have been welcome...) Reverting from the name TNIV back to NIV seems pretty close to the edge of deceptive (particularly after the earlier commitment to freeze the NIV), but, hey, you own the name and so who am I to complain? But why oh why do you have to make the NIV1984 go away?! It just smacks of sour grapes to me -- "I want you to read a version of the Bible that agrees with my theology and so (since I own the ball) I'm going to take my ball and go home." Rather than reducing the controversy started with the NIVi and the TNIV you're just declaring a winner ... and running off anyone who doesn't agree with you.
Please ... you publish lots of different versions! (Looking on your products page for just the briefest of moments I see NIrV, NRSV, KJV, and NASB in addition to the NIV.) Just leave NIV84 in print. You don't like the confusion over names? (Oops - too late! You should have thought of that before releasing NIV2011 under the "NIV" name.) No problem - call it TIV (Traditional International Version) or NIoV/OIV (Old International Version, of course!) (that was a joke) or some such thing. I would probably avoid "Traditional New International Version" if you're wanting to avoid controversy, but maybe that's just me... :-)
But please don't leave my generation of verse-memorizers and Bible readers high and dry. It doesn't hurt Zondervan to have another similar-sounding version name out there. Shoot - it may even contribute to INCREASED sales!
We like you, Zondervan! We want to buy from you! Don't drive us away!
Good article on the subject: http://dkevinbrown.wordpress.com/2011/01/05/bible-translations/
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