Bible Translation Debate: Complete TNIV Hits the Streets...Continued from page 1

“Our mission at Zondervan for our Bible group is simple: It is more people engaging the Bible more,” Caminiti said. “We have wrestled for some time with the idea that we might engage more people than ever before in God’s Word. And as we began to look carefully at that and as we began to study different people and their degrees of ripeness, in a sense, for spiritual truth, it became clear through our research that the most spiritually-intrigued group on the planet are 18 to 34 year olds.”

Still, Grudem contends that a desire to reach a particular demographic group does not provide warrant to alter the Scriptures.

“I think every 18-34 year old can understand the first grade reading words ‘man,’ ‘father,’ ‘son,’ ‘brother,’ and ‘he/him/his,’” Grudem said. “Do people really want a Bible where they can’t trust that what they are reading is what the Bible says?”

Instead of using terms such as “gender inclusive” and “gender neutral” to describe the TNIV’s revised language, Zondervan’s ad blitz uses the slogan “Timeless truth. Today’s language" and says the Bible is “gender accurate." But that itself is an inaccurate description, say both Grudem and Randy Stinson, executive director of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.

“This translation is by and large inaccurate when it comes to the gender-related language,” Stinson said. “While calling it gender-accurate might be a good marketing move, it cannot hide the fact that in literally thousands of places this Bible – in its use of words such as `son’, `he’, `him’, `his’, `brother’, `man’, and `father’, are translated in ways not recognized in standard Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic dictionaries. The result is a loss of meaning throughout the entire Old and New Testament.”

Despite Zondervan’s noble intentions, Stinson fears that changing pronouns and inserting neutral gender references to suit contemporary whims will not compel large numbers of any age particular group to desire the Scriptures but will only place an inaccurate translation in the hands of Christians.

“While we are grateful for the desire to reach a particular age group, we are doubtful that the reason this age group does not read the Bible is because of masculine pronouns and the presence of words like father, brother, and son,” Stinson said. “It is possible to have good motives and still end up with a faulty product. This, in my estimation, is what has happened with the TNIV.”

Caminiti contends that the TNIV is an accurate translation – one he believes eventually will replace the NIV as the translation of choice among evangelicals.

“This translation was done by the Committee for Bible Translators (CBT) which is the same committee that translated the NIV,” Caminiti said. “In our estimation, they are the most qualified group of translators on the planet. They come from the most renowned evangelical colleges and seminaries in the world. They are a who’s who of linguists and we would make a very clear distinction between someone who is a trained linguist and simply someone who has a theological degree.