Showing posts with label Bible translations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bible translations. Show all posts

Thursday 14 January 2010

The NIV and the Name of God

In one of my conversations I had on Bible translation, publishing and contribution

TJ had written: > > This continues corrupt practices such as removing God's name from
 the Bible, simply because that's what their target audience wants. And of course popular ministers and theologians get paid for their endorsements and use of certain versions.

to which I wrote: > That is a strong accusation. This would be very bad.


On which TJ had a few comments to add:


Cover for a NIV Bible
Cover for a NIV Bible (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
When the New International Version (the most popular version in the USA) was released, one of Jehovah's Witnesses wrote the publishers asking why they left God's name out of the Bible. The letter was reprinted in the following Watchtower article.

"Why did the recently published 'New International Version' (NIV) of the Bible fail to use the name of God where it appears about 7,000 times in ancient Bible manuscripts? In response to a person who inquired about this, Edwin H. Palmer, Th.D., Executive Secretary for the NIV's committee wrote:

"'Here is why we did not: You are right that Jehovah is a distinctive name for God and ideally we should have used it. But we put 2 1/4 million dollars into this translation and a sure way of throwing that down the drain is to translate, for example, Psalm 23 as, "Yahweh is my shepherd." Immediately, we would have translated for nothing. Nobody would have used it. Oh, maybe you and a handful [of] others. But a Christian has to be also wise and practical. We are the victims of 350 years of the King James tradition. It is far better to get two million to read it—that is how many have bought it to date—and to follow the King James, than to have two thousand buy it and have the correct translation of Yahweh. . . . It was a hard decision, and many of our translators agree with you.'"

Dutch version:

De NIV en de Naam van God

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2013 update:

 


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