niv who wrote it?

The New International Version (NIV) is a translation of the Bible in contemporary English. Published by Biblica, the complete NIV was released in 1978 with a minor revision in 1984 and a major revision in 2011. The NIV relies on recently published critical editions of the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts.

Biblica claims that "the NIV delivers the very best combination of accuracy and readability." As of March 2013, over 450 million printed copies of the translation had been distributed. The NIV is the best-selling translation in the United States.

In 1955, businessman Howard Long was convinced of the need for a contemporary English translation of the Bible while sharing the gospel with a business associate. He was unhappy with the King James Version that he used to communicate the gospel and was frustrated with its archaic language. He thought, “Everywhere I go, in Canada, the U.S., anywhere, there are people who would like to read their Bible to their children at night. And they don’t have something the children can grasp.” He shared the frustration with his pastor Reverend Peter DeJong. Inspired by the great need for a Bible in contemporary English, the two men petitioned their denomination, Christian Reformed Church (CRC). After initial rejection and deferral, the CRC endorsed a committee to investigate the issue in 1957.

The NIV began with the formation of a small committee to study the value of producing a translation in the common language of the American people and a project of the National Association of Evangelicals in 1957. In 1964, a joint committee of representatives from the Christian Reformed Church and National Association of Evangelicals issued invitations to a translation conference and that conference met in August 1965 at Trinity Christian College in Palos Heights, Illinois. Two key decisions were made, the first was that “a contemporary English translation of the Bible should be undertaken as a collegiate endeavor of evangelical scholars.” The second was that a “continuing committee of fifteen” should be established to move the work forward. The “committee of fifteen” was ultimately named the Committee on Bible Translation (CBT) while the “Contemporary English Translation” became the NIV.

In 1967, the New York Bible Society (now called Biblica) took responsibility for the project and hired a team of 15 scholars from various Evangelical Christian denominations and from various countries. The initial "Committee on Bible Translation" consisted of Leslie Carlson, Edmund Clowney, Ralph Earle, Jr., Burton L. Goddard, R. Laird Harris, Earl S. Kalland, Kenneth Kantzer, Robert H. Mounce, Charles F. Pfeiffer, Charles Caldwell Ryrie, Francis R. Steele, John H. Stek, J. C. Wenger, Stephen W. Paine, and Marten Woudstra. The New Testament was released in 1973 and the full Bible in 1978. A UK version was also released, to accommodate differences between American English and British English.

The NIV underwent a minor revision in 1984.

In 1995 a new version of the New Testament and Psalms was published in the UK, with the full Bible following in 1996 as the New International Version Inclusive Language Edition, but was not published in the U.S. because of opposition from conservative evangelical groups there to gender-neutral language. A further edition with minor edits was published in 1999.

A revised English edition titled Today's New International Version (TNIV), again using gender-neutral language, was released as a New Testament in March 2002, the complete Bible being published in February 2005.

In 2011, an updated version of the NIV was released, with both the 1984 version and the TNIV being discontinued.

The update modified and dropped some of the gender-neutral language compared to TNIV. This includes going back to using "mankind" and "man" rather than "human beings" and "people", along with other changes. Keith Danby—president and chief executive officer of Biblica, speaking of the TNIV—said they had failed to convince people revisions were needed and underestimated readers' loyalty to the 1984 edition.

An 'easy-reader' version, New International Reader's Version (NIrV), was published in 1996; it was written at a third grade reading level.

In 1979, the decision was made to produce a version of the New Testament in Spanish with the title La Santa Biblia, Nueva Versión Internacional (often abbreviated NVI), though at this point this version was based only on the former English translation of the historic manuscripts. In 1990, the committee on Bible translation headed by Drs. René Padilla and Luciano Jaramillo conducted a translation of both testaments from the historic manuscripts directly into Spanish, bypassing English altogether and producing a complete Spanish NVI Bible in 1999.

In 2001, the Nova Versão Internacional in Portuguese was published.

The manuscript base for the Old Testament was the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia Masoretic Hebrew Text. Other ancient texts consulted were the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion, the Latin Vulgate, the Syriac Peshitta, the Aramaic Targum, and for the Psalms the Juxta Hebraica of Jerome. The manuscript base for the New Testament was the Koine Greek language editions of the United Bible Societies and of Nestle-Aland. The deuterocanonical books are not included in the translation.

The core translation group consisted of fifteen Biblical scholars using Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts whose goal was to produce a more modern English language text than the King James Version. The translation took ten years and involved a team of over 100 scholars from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. The range of those participating included many different denominations such as Anglicans, Assemblies of God, Baptist, Christian Reformed, Lutheran and Presbyterian.

The NIV is a balance between word-for-word and thought-for-thought or literal and phrase-by-phrase translations.

Recent archaeological and linguistic discoveries helped in understanding passages that have traditionally been difficult to translate. Familiar spellings of traditional translations were generally retained.

According to the Association for Christian Retail (CBA), the New International Version has become the most popular selling English translation of the Bible in CBA bookstores, having sold more than 450 million copies worldwide.

There are numerous study Bibles available with extensive notes on the text and background information to make the Biblical stories more comprehensible. Among these are the NIV Spirit of the Reformation Study Bible, Concordia Study Bible, the Zondervan published NIV Study Bible, the Wesleyan revision, Reflecting God Study Bible, as well as the Life Application Study Bible.

In 2009, the New Testament scholar N. T. Wright wrote that the NIV obscured what Paul the Apostle was saying, making sure that Paul's words conformed to Protestant and Evangelical tradition. He claims, "if a church only, or mainly, relies on the NIV it will, quite simply, never understand what Paul was talking about," especially in Galatians and Romans. In support of this claim, Wright mentions specifically several verses of Romans 3, which he suggests do not convey how "righteousness" refers to the covenant faithfulness of God or reflect his own thinking about the pistis Christou debate. All editions of the NIV have given "God's Faithfulness" as the heading for Romans 3:1–8. Wright's specific objections concerning verses later in the chapter no longer apply to the 2011 revision of the NIV, which moreover offers "the faithfulness of Jesus Christ" as an alternative translation to "faith in Jesus Christ" in Romans 3:22.

Mark Given, a professor of religious studies at Missouri State University, criticized the NIV for "several inaccurate and misleading translations" as many sentences and clauses are paraphrased, rather than translated from Hebrew and Greek.

Michael Marlowe, a scholar in biblical languages, criticized as "indefensible" the footnote provided in the NIV for 1 Corinthians 11:4–7, which replaced multiple instances of "head covering" with "long hair" in order to "harmonize this passage with modern habits of dress". Church historian David Bercot, whose focus is early Christianity, likewise deemed the footnote a "fanciful interpretation" that "is in no way an alternate translation of the Greek text."

Others have also criticized the NIV. In Genesis 2:19 a translation such as the New Revised Standard Version uses "formed" in a plain past tense: "So out of the ground the LORD God formed every animal". Some have questioned the NIV's choice of pluperfect: "Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals" to try to make it appear that the animals had already been created. Theologian John Sailhamer states "Not only is such a translation  hardly possible  but it misses the very point of the narrative, namely, that the animals were created in response to God's declaration that it was not good that the man should be alone."

Biblical scholar Bruce M. Metzger criticized the NIV 1984 edition for the addition of just into Jeremiah 7:22 so the verse becomes "For when I brought your forefathers/ancestors out of Egypt and spoke to them, I did not just give them commands about burnt offerings and sacrifices." Metzger also criticized the addition of your into Matthew 13:32, so it becomes "Though it is the smallest of all your seeds." The usage of your was removed in the 2011 revision.

Professor of New Testament Studies Daniel B. Wallace praised the 2011 update, calling it "a well-thought out translation, with checks and balances through rigorous testing, overlapping committees to ensure consistency and accuracy, and a publisher willing to commit significant resources to make this Bible appealing to the Christian reader." The Southern Baptist Convention rejected the 2011 update because of gender-neutral language, although it had dropped some gender-neutral language of the 2005 revision. Southern Baptist publisher LifeWay declined the SBC's censor request to remove the NIV from their stores. While the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod rejected its use, some in the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS) believe many of the translations changes are right and defensible.

Professor of New Testament Studies Rodney J. Decker wrote in the Themelios Journal review of the NIV 2011:

In 1967, the New York Bible Society (now called Biblica) took responsibility for the project and hired a team of 15 scholars from various Evangelical Christian denominations and from various countries. The initial "Committee on Bible Translation" consisted of Leslie Carlson, Edmund Clowney, Ralph Earle, Jr., Burton L.

GRAND RAPIDS — Christian publishing giant Zondervan is blending new wording and new packaging for a Bible intended to meet needs across the board.

The Grand Rapids-based company released the first in a long line of updated New International Version Bibles last week.

The newest version of the NIV translation is the first for Zondervan since 1984. The original NIV came out in 1978 as a result of an independent committee formed in the 1960s to produce a new translation.

The Committee on Bible Translation meets yearly to consider changes in the NIV Bible. Zondervan, which holds North American publishing rights, and Biblica, which holds noncommercial rights around the world, approached the committee in 2009 about a new translation.

“About 95 percent of the words are the same,” said Doug Moo, committee chairman and professor of New Testament at Wheaton Graduate School. “On the one hand, we tried to keep the continuity because the translation was so good the first time. But there were a lot of changes in the English language that needed to be reflected as well.”

The committee considered how certain words were used in recently discovered ancient manuscripts and evidence from scholars gained over the past several decades before proposing changes to the text. The 15-member committee votes on each proposed change, with 70 percent having to be in agreement before it’s made.

“The vote is very rarely unanimous,” said Moo. “We don’t want to change easily, nor fall prey to every whim and fashion that comes around and stays just a year or two.”

The committee issued a public appeal to the scholarly community asking for its best ideas for updates on the NIV Bible, then met for four separate weeks in 2010 to decide what to change.

“It’s a complicated process,” said Moo. “We take pride in producing a Bible that is very accurate, and all view it as a solemn charge because we’re working with the words of God.”

Zondervan has updated the NIV Bible’s packaging as well. The company hired IDEO, an award-winning design firm, to help. IDEO initiated shop-alongs with consumers and home interviews.

“When you shop with someone, you discover how hard it is to buy a Bible,” said Chip Brown, executive vice president of Bibles at Zondervan. “We had ended up making Bible buyers need a seminary degree. Consumers are embarrassed that they don’t know enough and won’t ask for help.”

The new NIV features sturdier packaging, windows to see cover color and texture, and clear symbols on front, back and side indicating print size, whether the Bible can lay flat or not, and that it’s the NIV. A QR — “quick response” — code on the back leads buyers with smart phones to a video about the new NIV.

“We wanted to create something that delivers increased value for the customer, but also for distributors and bookstores as well,” Brown said.

Area bookstores are stocking the Bibles as they come in over the next months. Zondervan has 177 different skews — or varieties — of the NIV that will be released, along with a variety of posters, end-cap kits and shelf-talkers for bookstores.

“We’ve seen a slight uptick in sales,” said Bob Gillett, manager of Kregel Parable Christian Store on the East Beltline.

“The new packaging is driving attention to the NIV, plus it gives customers more information about the Bible.”

Zondervan has released 20 editions of the new NIV including the Thinline Bible, Adventure Bible, Bloom Collection and several gift Bible editions.

E-mail the author of this story: localnews@grpress.com

Howard Long, an engineer from Seattle, was known for his passion for sharing the gospel and his love for the King James Bible. One day, he tried sharing Scripture with a non-Christian—only to find that the KJV’s 17th-century English didn’t connect.

In 1955, Long embarked on a ten-year quest for a new Bible translation that would faithfully capture the Word of God in contemporary English. Eventually his denomination, the Christian Reformed Church (CRC), and the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) embraced his vision for the NIV.

In 1965, a cross-denominational gathering of evangelical scholars met near Chicago and agreed to start work on the New International Version. Instead of just updating an existing translation like the KJV, they chose to start from scratch, using the very best manuscripts available in the original Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic of the Bible.

One year later, their decision was endorsed by a gathering of 80 evangelical ministry leaders and scholars. And so the Committee on Bible Translation (CBT), the self-governing body responsible for the NIV, was born.

To ensure maximum accuracy and readability, the NIV went through perhaps the most rigorous translation process in history. First, each book of the Bible was assigned to a translation team consisting of: • Two lead translators • Two translation consultants • One English style consultant (if necessary)

Then another team of five Bible scholars reviewed their work, carefully comparing it to the original biblical text and assessing its readability. From there, each book went to a general committee of 8 to 12 scholars. As part of the final review, outside critics gave feedback. Samples were tested with pastors, students, and laypeople. Perhaps no other Bible translation has gone through a more thorough process to ensure accuracy and readability.

In 1968, Biblica (then the New York Bible Society) came on board as the NIV’s financial sponsor, mortgaging its office space in Manhattan and New Jersey so that Howard Long’s dream of a trustworthy, accessible Bible translation would become reality.

Ten years later, the full NIV Bible was published. The initial print run of over a million copies sold out before they were even done printing. Such was the demand for an accurate, readable Bible. Dozens of evangelical denominations, churches, and seminaries embraced the NIV as their official Bible translation for preaching, study, public reading, and personal use.

The translators’ work didn’t end when the NIV was published in 1978. The original mandate, given in 1965, was to continue the work of Bible translation, ensuring that the NIV always reflects the very best of biblical scholarship and contemporary English.