Is the 2011 Revision of the NIV an Improvement?

The New International Version (NIV) of the Bible is now the top selling English version of the Bible according to the Christian Booksellers Association. A new revision of the NIV Bible has recently been released that is hoped will replace the previous 1984 edition, but is this 2011 revision the improvement publishers are hoping it would be? That's the question many have.

The curriculum I use in training pastors and church leaders here in Belize is designed to be used with the NIV Study Bible. So this topic hits close to home with me. I noticed a few differences between the two editions recently that seemed small enough, but then I did my homework and became more concerned.

Let me give you a brief history you'll need to know if you're not knowledgable on recent translation issues concerning the NIV. Zondervan (the publisher of the NIV) put out a translation of the NIV in 2005 called Today's New International Version (TNIV). It immediately became controversial among evangelical Christians because it sought to be a "gender neutral" version of the Bible. The controversy became so heated that the TNIV never caught on with American evangelicals and has now been discontinued.

Readers should realize, first, that the 2011 NIV is not a revision based on the old NIV of 1984, but is a revision based on the now-defunct TNIV of 2005. So there is an obvious question that needs answering. Have the weaknesses of the TNIV been sufficiently overcome in the 2011 NIV?

In a report put out by The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, Wayne Grudem and Jerry Thacker, catalogued some 3,686 "inaccurate translations in the TNIV" that related to gender language when the entire TNIV Bible first appeared in 2005. Their recent evaluation of the gender language in the 2011 edition of the Bible can be read here. They found that although the 2011 NIV corrected many of its most controversial renderings of gender language from the TNIV, the majority (75%) of the problems identified still remain. In many cases the 2011 NIV follows the TNIV and unnecessarily removes male-oriented terminology that was present in the 1984 NIV -especially the use of generic masculine forms of expression.

You would do well to at least read the conclusion of the article to get the gist of things, especially since the 2011 version changes some key verses on women's roles in the church so that they favor an evangelical feminist position. Please do your homework on this topic and make a wise, informed decision about this revision. It will at least mean that you have to open the cover to see if it's the 1984 or 2011 edition before you buy it.