Is there any doubt from the title of this post that I don’t exactly have great feelings of sadness for the demise of the TNIV? It is perhaps not so appropriate to call the TNIV “the witch” since it is a “faithful and scholarly translation” but there you have it. There are others for whom the TNIV has been an important resource for their own lives and ministry and they are sad to see it go. Daniel writes:
As someone who communicates from the Bible on a weekly basis, I have found the TNIV to be a faithful, accurate and scholarly update to the best-selling NIV translation many of us grew up with.
Well God bless him. Eugene Cho also is lamenting its demise. I personally have used the TNIV on occasion (usually because there was no other option available) but have never purchased one and wouldn’t unless I had no other option. I was opposed to its publication for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the gender inclusive language. From Christianity Today:
“Whatever its strengths were, the TNIV divided the evangelical Christian community,” said Zondervan president Moe Girkins. “So as we launch this new NIV, we will discontinue putting out new products with the TNIV.”
Girkins expects the TNIV and the existing edition of the NIV to phase out over two years or so as
products are replaced. “It will be several years before you won’t be able to buy the TNIV off a bookshelf,” she said.
“We are correcting the mistakes in the past,” Girkins said. “Being as transparent as possible is part of that. This decision was made by the board in the last 10 days.” She said the transparency is part of an effort to overhaul the NIV “in a way that unifies Christian evangelicalism.”
“The first mistake was the NIVi,” Danby said. “The second was freezing the NIV. The third was the process of handling the TNIV.”
I have no quarrels with or suspicions about the motives of the scholars who did the work of translation for the TNIV. I am certain (as certain as anyone can be about such things) that their motives were honorable and pure before God. This is true even as it relates to the issue of gender inclusive language.
Doug Moo, chairman of the the Committee on Bible Translation (which is the body responsible for the translation) said the committee has not yet decided how much the 2011 edition will include the gender-inclusive language that riled critics of the TNIV.
“We felt certainly at the time it was the right thing to do, that the language was moving in that direction,” Moo said. “All that is back on the table as we reevaluate things this year. This has been a time over the last 15 to 20 years in which the issue of the way to handle gender in English has been very much in flux, in process, in development. And things are changing quickly and so we are going to look at all of that again as we produce the 2011 NIV.”
The “flux” to which Moo refers concerning the English language is actually overstated. Neutered language is the norm in academic English usage and has moved into common usage beyond the academy due mostly to rather aggressive efforts to mold popular use. Unlike the evolution of the English language generally, the neutering of the language happened intentionally as a way to counter what were considered to be the oppressive patriarchal assumptions embedded in the language.
Why this gender thing matters, but not really
In so many ways, it honestly doesn’t. Though I am no Greek scholar, I am aware that in many places the language used is, in some ways, generic, that is, it does not specify gender, or more specifically, sex. To neuter the original language in this way in order to conform to contemporary English usage norms makes a lot of good sense and doesn’t fundamentally challenge any doctrines of the church.
In other ways though, the neutering of language is quite significant as it says something powerful about how the church interacts with culture. It is in fact only the newest manifestation of the church’s efforts to respond to and speak relevantly to a culture that is rapidly becoming post-Christan and into which the church’s voice as a culture shaping agent is less and less important. The multiplication of English language translations in the last century is testimony of the increasing marginalization of the church in society and every attempt at relevance reinforces greater and greater alienation. But more on that in a later post. In the mean time: