Subject: Have you looked at the published TNIV/ |
Bible Note: justme ::: A tip of the Razorback helmet to you for your interesting discussion of the TNIV translation and related matters of new Bible translations and marketing of same. Knowing in what high regard our good brother EdB holds the TNIV and its publisher, Zondervan, [I'm ribbing Ed with pure irony: just the opposite is true!] perhaps I should go easy on TNIV, but in good conscience I cannot. I've read several dozens of highly questionable passages from the TNIV and and a number of reviews of this translation from persons whose judgment I prize highly: and it is thus weighed in the balance and found wanting. In my view there was never any real need to revise the NIV, and even if there were, there was clearly no excuse to produce a revision that so blatantly departed from the manuscript text. They didn't improve on the NIV; they made it worse. Although I am not nor have ever been particularly enamored with the NIV, I have found it to be at least one of the better products of the "dynamic equivalence" school -- better by far than some of the looser paraphrases that claim to be God's word, if you get the "message"! The "need" for many of these newer attempts to render God's word in English, and I include TNIV in the list, is less a need for another new translation on the part of the reading public than it is a need of the publisher to sell more books. Bibles are big business which means big bucks and big profits to publishers. Now there are some publishers who are not-for-profit firms, such as Lockman and Holman. But the publisher of TNIV certainly is in the business to make money. The potential buyer would do well to keep that in mind and weigh it against all the sweet talk he hears about how great the TNIV is and why he just must buy a copy! Believe me, I have managed to survive quite comfortably wihout depending on the NIV and have every confidence that I shall be equally able to get along without the TNIV. ..... Hmmm, I do wonder though how many copies of the TNIV EdB owns... :-) --Hank |