the NIV reloaded

I sent an email to my stu­dents and it occurred to me that it might be of more gen­er­al inter­est:

Chi Alphans,

You might be inter­est­ed to know that the NIV trans­la­tion of the Bible has been revised. You can’t buy it in stores yet, but it is avail­able online at biblegateway.com

I think you’ll find the trans­la­tor’s notes inter­est­ing. They include a sec­tion on lan­guage and gen­der and also have a list of key pas­sages that have changed in the newest trans­la­tion. http://www.biblegateway.com/niv/Translators-Notes.pdf

And while I’m on the sub­ject of new releas­es of the Bible (which is a weird sen­tence), I should men­tion that there is a new, aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly legit com­pi­la­tion of the Greek New Tes­ta­ment avail­able at http://sblgnt.com/

Final­ly, remem­ber that every trans­la­tion opti­mizes some things at the expense of oth­ers. There is no “best” trans­la­tion. It’s far more impor­tant you read what­ev­er you have than that you engage in some fruit­less quest for the ide­al. In oth­er words, your exist­ing NIV will do just fine from now until you die.

Glen

P.S. There is no “best trans­la­tion” but there is an option you might not have con­sid­ered — you can learn to read the Bible in its orig­i­nal lan­guages. It’s not for every­one, but just think of it: you can earn Stan­ford cred­its while grow­ing in your under­stand­ing of God’s Word — it’s a twofer!