TNIV optimism

Posted: 10th December 2007 by ElShaddai Edwards in Uncategorized
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Kevin Sam has posted a more optimistic article on the future of the TNIV than the thoughts that I’ve previously expressed here and here:

Personally, I believe the TNIV is still going to be a very strong evangelical translation because it is entrenched in evangelicalism and is like family to many evangelicals. However, the TNIV is going to have to slowly earn its place in the evangelical world of bible readers. When its gender-neutral language gains wider acceptance, and people will slowly forget about what its opponents said about it, then the people will eventually come around to accepting the TNIV.

He concludes:

If the NLT took this long to gain its readership, I think the TNIV will take just as long to gain its own readership. I believer the older generation of bible-readers will eventually come around to trying the TNIV and maybe they will even like it. It will have its contingent of strong supporters out there, especially from the younger generation. Eventually, one day, it will replace the NIV as the premier translation in the evangelical world.

  1. Kevin Sam says:
    December 12, 2007 at 3:39 PM

    Yes, I have no doubt that the TNIV will gain in popularity. It’s too good of a translation for readers out there to ignore. Naysayers will eventually have to give in to accepting it. If the majority of the public can accept the NLT, then why not the TNIV?

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  2. ElShaddai Edwards says:
    December 12, 2007 at 3:52 PM

    I think that the NLT has been “branded” as a personal/devotional Bible and that the public is more willing to accept textual variance from that than from what they perceive as study or church Bibles, e.g. the NIV, NRSV and ESV. My previous church aside, I’d be shocked if a significant percentage of churches reported using the NLT as their pew Bible, whereas the NIV is ubiquitous.

    This is the complaint against the TNIV, right? That somehow changing the gender language has made it less accurate than the NIV and thus less appropriate for “serious” Bible use. The NLT seemingly gets a free pass on gender language because it’s coming from a functional (=paraphrase) background, while the TNIV get skewered because the NIV is considered more of a formal (=literal) translation (than the NLT).

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