NIV Ads: Just Marketing or Plain Misleading?

I have not been a fan of the NIV ever since I was able to understand the complexities of translation philosophy. In my opinion, it was more popular due to its marketing strategy than for its merit as a translation. (My opinions on the NIV can be found mixed among my posts on bible translation.) I'm sure Zondervan has high hopes that NIV 2011 will help them retain market share and win over the crowd that largely panned TNIV due to the gender translation issue. While initial reports suggested NIV 2011 was more restrained on that issue, I don't think they went far enough to fix the problems with TNIV (as noted here). My litmus test remains their translation of Isaiah 19:16. TNIV and NIV 2011 gut the original of its intentionally insulting rhetoric. I won't translate the verse here lest I offend you.

I have ignored most of the recent advertising push to promote the NIV 2011, but a full back cover ad on a Christian magazine caught my eye. Here's the text from the ad. Is it just marketing spin or a misleading misrepresentation of the facts?

It's amazing how going back to the beginning moves us so far forward. Translated from the most reliable ancient biblical manuscripts. Tirelessly researched by the world's preeminent biblical scholars and linguists. And made crystal clear for English-speaking audiences worldwide. The New International Version is the translation that's easy to understand, yet rich with the detail found in the original Scripture.

Let's look at these claims and their implications.

1. "Translated from the most reliable ancient biblical manuscripts." Oh no! I need to get an NIV. My other Bibles didn't use the most reliable ancient manuscripts. Actually, most translations use the same critical texts in Hebrew and Greek created by scholars from what seem to be the most reliable ancient manuscripts. NIV has a slightly different Greek text than the standard NT critical text, but we are all essentially working with the same manuscript data. The difference is in which variations get preference in translation.

2. "Tirelessly researched by the world's preeminent biblical scholars and linguists." Other Bible translation committees don't have the "preeminent" scholars (only the eminent ones), so NIV must be better. And they worked "tirelessly" this time. Actually, in these past two decades of expanding English Bible versions, many scholars have been involved in the production of multiple versions. Some of the same people working with a different translation philosophy. But at least when working on the NIV, they didn't get tired.

3. "And made crystal clear for English-speaking audiences worldwide." This is a value judgment. Crystal clear relative to what? Young's Literal Translation? The New American Standard? The King James? What is made clear? The meaning of the "original"? The English style? 

4. "easy to understand, yet rich with the detail found in the original Scripture." It's as easy to understand as most moderately idiomatic English translations. But I don't understand how they can claim, in all seriousness, to be "rich with the detail found in the original Scripture." The gender-sensitive issue forces a translation that completely suppresses the rich metaphorical detail of the Hebrew in Isaiah 19:16.

I realize that some people will honestly agree with the opinions about the NIV found in this ad. Only the last claim is, in my opinion, stretching the truth. Our Bible translation preferences have been conditioned from years of using a particular favorite. For a long time, the NIV has been that favorite for a lot of people. An ad like this is designed to get people to stick with the NIV, hopefully without thinking too much about it.

New Leaven on the New NIV

Making my way through the hundreds of unread posts in my feed reader, I found a couple of good posts about the new NIV over at New Leaven.

T.C. has drawn my attention to the fact that NIV2011 played it safe with the gender issue (which was my main criticism of TNIV - I still think it went too far). He also points out a site by Robert Slowley that has posted some stats comparing the NIV 1984, TNIV, and NIV 2011. T.C. has also compared several texts from Romans where new NIV has more theological clarity than old NIV. Check out his posts for more details!

The NEW and "Improved" NIV is . . .

driven (IMO) more by a desire to sell more Bibles and maintain the market share of NIV in light of competition from HCSB, ESV, and NLTse than by any real need for another English version. It is clear that the translators are less interested in revealing the linguistic and literary complexity of the biblical world than with maintaining an ignorant public's faith in the accuracy of the putative original language and text. My opinion is based on the quote from Douglas Moo shared here by Joseph Kelly and reproduced in part below.

When the books of the Bible were first written, they captured exactly what God wanted to say, in the languages and idioms used by the ordinary people of the time. Those first readers of God’s word could understand the meaning of what God was communicating in the form that God chose to say it—the Hebrew and Greek that were the languages of that time.

This is perhaps the greatest oversimplification of the issues of writing, literacy, and vernacular speech vs. scribal language that I have ever seen/heard/read from an educated Bible scholar. Disappointing but not unexpected considering the audience.

Responses to the translation (now available online) have proliferated around the biblioblogosphere this week. A helpful roundup of some of the posts is at Near Emmaus. I have not yet had time to look closely at the translation to see how it compares to earlier NIV or if it fixes what I disliked about TNIV. John Hobbins offers an analysis of their translation of Ecclesiastes 11:1-2. Rick Mansfield has offered his initial thoughts on the translation.

I'm sure there are more, but if this is an issue you're interested in, there's plenty to read already.