Is the NIV a deliberate mistranslation?
There is an interesting debate going on at the blog 'Is that in the Bible?' on whether the NIV deliberately mistranslates in social club to back up a particular theological position. The blog is past Paul Davidson, who is not a professional biblical studies scholar (though is a professional person translator), only it has attracted comment from a number of quarters, and is now developing quite a list of 'problem' translations in the NIV.
The discussion became particularly interesting when I pointed it out to David Instone-Brewer of Tyndale Firm, who is on the NIV translation committee. He offered some lengthy counter-arguments, to which Paul has responded. Here is one part of the discussion:
[DIB] Hello Paul, I came across this website while I was at the annual NIV translation committee. I was hoping to find some serious problems which could get sorted out, only after reading through a lot of this, I've concluded your comments may be based on a misapprehension. Y'all announced to think that the NIV translator endeavour to polish over problems in the Bible past stretching the translation. We don't.
We meet every year to consider proposals for changes, mostly due to recent findings in bookish enquiry, and also for major changes in English usage. We specifically reject whatsoever proposals that are merely apologetic attempts to remove issues in the text.
Peradventure the all-time manner to explain the thinking behind the NIV translation is to go through the get-go few examples: …
Gen.2.8; two.19: "had planted" and "had formed".
Every bit you know, in that location is no pluperfect tense in Hebrew, nor whatsoever other tenses in the sense that English uses them. Translating an attribute linguistic communication like Hebrew into a tense-based language like English requires careful attention to the context. Aboriginal Near Eastern narratives are often not chronological – they move from general to specific and back again and expect the reader to put the pieces together in the obvious chronological guild. We see this sometimes in modern movies or novels which take frequent flashbacks, or which tell extended back-stories. The best way to translate brusk retrospectives like this into English is past using the pluperfect…Gen.29.five "son" or "grandson"
Hebrew is a language with a very pocket-size vocabulary – there are only about 8000 words in the OT – whereas English has a much larger vocabulary. Ane consequence is that Hebrew has no word for "grandson". Although it is possible to say "son of my son" or something like that, Hebrew rarely bothers and but uses "BEN" for any descendant. It is similar to the way that we rarely distinguish between a maternal grandmother and paternal grandmother, whereas some languages take separate words then that this ambiguity would be impossible.While information technology would exist accurate to translate BEN as "descendant", this would create a very clunky and inelegant translation, and then no version does this throughout. Nosotros accept to use our intelligence, as the author intended, to make up one's mind whether this is a 'son' or 'grandson' (or any), and translate appropriately.
[PD]Gen two.8, ii.nineteen — Whatsoever Bible scholar knows or ought to know that the Eden story is an independent and self-contained story contained from Gen 1. There is no contextual reason to think that those two instances where the NIV switches from past to by perfect is a "short retrospective" equally you put information technology. This is adequately addressed past Dr. Mariottini (himself a conservative scholar) in the link I provided, just y'all can consult any technical commentary on Genesis to confirm this. In 2.19, for case, the context is God creating the animals to discover a helper for Adam. The NIV's resorting to the pluperfect obscures what is the plain reading of the story.
Gen 29.5 — My trouble with the NIV's frequent changing of "son" to "grandson" and like genealogical alterations is that they are done but to harmonize credible contradictions, by allowing the plain reading of i passage but not the other. Furthermore, this eliminates other possibilities for harmonization, equally well equally the possibility that the traditions involved are simply contradictory. The NIV obscures what the text says and prevents the reader from arriving at his or her own conclusion. And I have taken into consideration the fact that other translations do not do this, making them more reliable in my opinion than the NIV.
I of the other significant discussions is about whether it is reasonable to follow the Greek OT (Septuagint or Seventy) instead of the Hebrew (Masoretic text or MT), when the 70 matches a NT quotation. The best-known example of this is in Hosea half dozen.half dozen, where the MT reads 'I wanthesed[loving faithfulness] non cede' though Matt 9.13 has Jesus quoting the Lxx 'I desire mercy not cede.'
There are several things to note hither. The start is that there are some genuine issues of translational difficulty beingness addressed hither, and judgements demand to be made. It is always the case that translation involves interpretation, and interpretive decisions cannot be avoided in translation.
The second thing to note is that dissimilar kinds of translations aim to attain unlike things. Should a translation aim to convey the words used? Or the force of the idioms? Or the function of an expression in its cultural context? Or the rhetorical force of the text? One translation cannot exercise all of these, considering these different aspects of linguistic communication are conveyed in unlike means in different languages. So, at one end of the spectrum, Young's Literal Translation (which is non really 'literal' simply is 'word for word') aims to practice the first, and at the other cease of the spectrum Eugene Peterson'southThe Message aims to practice the last (so is not a translation then much as a paraphrase). David IB complains that the critics on this weblog post are expecting the NIV to do the same as Young'southward, when that is not its aim.
The third thing to note is that there is clearly a disharmonism of ideology here. Davidson ends his original blog post with a comment from Tom Wright:
When the New International Version was published in 1980, I was one of those who hailed information technology with delight. I believed its own claim about itself, that it was determined to interpret exactly what was there, and inject no extra paraphrasing or interpretative glosses…. Disillusionment set in over the next two years, as I lectured verse by verse through several of Paul'southward letters, not least Galatians and Romans. Over again and again, with the Greek text in front of me and the NIV abreast it, I discovered that the translators had another principle, considerably higher than the stated one: to make sure that Paul should say what the broadly Protestant and evangelical tradition said he said…. [I]f a church just, or mainly, relies on the NIV it volition, quite simply, never understand what Paul was talking well-nigh. [Justification: God's Program and Paul's Vision, 2009, pp. 51-52]
The NIV does have an ideological agenda, in that it is committed to believing in the 'complete trustworthiness of the Scriptures'. Simply it is also articulate that Davidson has an agenda, and that it is ideological.
In relation to the pluperfect in Gen ii, Davidson comments that whatsoever scholar is aware that Gen one and Gen 2 offering ii unlike accounts of creationand that they are contradictory. Instone-Brewer responds on the technical signal of translation that other ETs use a pluperfect within Gen ane in the same way every bit the NIV does in Gen 2. Merely more significant, he is wanting to treat the text in its final form as having some sort of narrative integrity. However the catechism of Scripture was compiled, it was at some point thought to accept coherence, and that can form part of our approach to translation.
This is especially evident in decisions with narrative OT texts. On the question of translatingben as 'son' or 'grandson', Davidson complains that decisions in the NIV are taken 'only to harmonize apparent contradictions'. But to interpret the term every bit 'son' alone is actually to create a contradiction where none exists, since 'son' doesnot in English mean 'grandson' or 'descendent' whereben in Hebrew does! So to insist on disharmony here is every bit much an ideological business organisation every bit to insist on harmony. In the terminate, nosotros cannot avoid making a prior sentence on whether the text is coherent or non.
These assumptions become more complex when considering the Hebrew versus Greek versions of the OT. Evangelicals have consistently wanted to believe in a single grade of the original text, even if we cannot know perfectly what that is. To switch betwixt Hebrew and Greek actually requires a believe in a pluriform 'inspired' text. Just, paradoxically, in insisting that translation should always be of the Hebrew OT, Davidson appears to be making the assumption of a unmarried text. There is clearly an ideological driver behind the desire to avoiding having Jesus misquote the OT—but the theological and textual assumptions backside this are quite circuitous.
In the end, I am non persuaded by all the decisions of the NIV, for many of the reasons given on the blog. Simply I am too not persuaded past a proficient number of the counter-examples; they are frequently as ideological as the translation they criticise.
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