Ok, so before I begin, I want to make sure that you understand that this post is just to offer a bit of information. I am in no way trying to be critical. I am not offering my opinion on what I think you should do. If you read an opinion in the text below, it is not my opinion, it is the opinion of some professors from Trinity Theological Seminary (at least that is where I think they are from). I am just informing you of this bit of news because we ran into some confusion with it in our Life Group. This, is nothing new under the sun. It is nothing out of God's control. It is nothing that God can't use and work through. I just want to inform you so that you can avoid the confusion if you feel it is necessary. :)
So, here is the deal. The publishing company is coming out with a new version of the NIV Bible. What they are doing is combining the old TNIV (which many believed to be very faulty) and combining it with the NIV, and changing some things to make them "more accurate" based on current research. However, they are not giving it a new name; it will continue to be called NIV. Basically, within the next year or so, if you go to buy a NIV Bible from the store, it will not read the same as your 1984 version. This new version, or new NIV is not released yet, however, it is being used on
Bible Gateway as the default NIV option. If you want, you can select it to specifically use the 1984 NIV. We had some confusion during our Life Group one night when Tyson was reading some verses from NIV on Bible Gateway (which we didn't realize was the new version coming out soon in print) many, many verses were worded differently. Tyson spoke with some friends and coworkers who looked into this matter by consulting some old professors. At the end, I'll post what they had to say in case you are interested in looking into this more yourself because it doesn't seem that the publisher will inform, promote, or advertise in any way that this new version, c. 2010 NIV, is actually different from the NIV that most people have (c.1984).
Ok, enough said. I just wanted to let you know in case that will cause any issues. If you want,
www.biblos.com is a good online site to use that currently still defaults to the 1984 NIV. As for me, I'm fond of ESV, but most of the verses I already have memorized are a conglomeration of KJV and NIV. I love them all! I love God's Word!!! Hope you have a chance to bathe yourself in His Words today!
The promised added info, which is stated more clearly than what I said:
I talked to a couple of my profs at Trinity and gathered more info along with some articles they recommended.
In short, the New Niv is going to replace the NIV and TNIV which are both slated to be phased out by 2011. They have made some corrections to the gender neutral language but have not totally alleviated the issues.
Here are two comments that come from CBMW that summarize things well.
“there are some significant problematic passages in the new NIV(2011) that have been retained from the TNIV, not the least of which is the deliberately ambiguous rendering of authentein in 1 Timothy 2:12 <http://biblia.com/bible/esv/1%20Timothy%202.12> as “assume authority.” The CBT says that this leaves the interpretation of the passage open, but it actually intentionally introduces a crucial ambiguity that is not found in the original NIV (which accurately translated authentein “have authority”). The new NIV(2011)’s translation ofauthentein designedly lends itself to a common current egalitarian misinterpretation of this passage (i.e., that Paul is only addressing the case of women illegitimately “assuming” authority, rather than prohibiting women from having/exercising authority as teacher/shepherds of the church).”
And
“So, though we are genuinely thankful for the many positive changes in the new NIV(2011), and though we are deeply appreciative of the very different process by which our friends at the CBT and Zondervan pursued and unveiled this new version, we still cannot commend the new NIV(2011) for most of the same reasons we could not commend the TNIV. Our initial analysis shows that the new NIV(2011) retains many of the problems that were present in the TNIV, on which it is based, especially with regard to the over 3,600 gender-related problems we previously identified. In spite of the many good changes made, our initial analysis reveals that a large percentage of our initial concerns still remain. CBMW will be releasing an exact percentage after we complete our full detailed analysis. We are also still concerned about the frequent omission of the words, “man,” “brother,” “father,” “son,” and “he.”
This is the full article and is probably the best and most current info: http://www.cbmw.org/Blog/Posts/CBMW-Responds-to-New-NIV2011
These are also helpful and were released in 2009 when the plans where announced. Al Mohler has some good comments in the first one listed:
http://www.christiantoday.com/article/evangelicals.welcome.niv.revision.with.cautious.optimism/24117.htm
http://blog.christianitytoday.com/ctliveblog/archives/2009/09/breaking_transl.html
