Veridican wrote: ↑Thu Jan 06, 2022 1:30 amGod has told me, via the Holy Spirit, that for the Veridican Church, we must use as a final authority on scripture the NIV 1984 ed.
With all due respect to the Holy Spirit, that seems like an odd choice for a "final authority." The NIV sacrifices accuracy to the original text for readability in a number of cases that amount to paraphrase. It's not as freely paraphrased as, say,
The Living Bible or
The Message, but unless you exactly agree doctrinally with the translator, it's unlikely that every minor paraphrase will match your understanding. That also means that certain kinds of Bible Study are more difficult with the NIV, particularly forms of exegesis that hinge on exact word meanings or turns of phrase (like in this thread, for example).
That's usually fine in a liturgical setting, where non-experts are helped by difficult or ambiguous phrases being smoothed out by the translator, but then you're trusting the translator to interpret the passages for you. Unless you either fully agree with the translator's doctrinal positions or declare that the translation itself is inspired of God, there are better choices for "scriptural authority" even if the NIV is still used as a liturgical Bible.
Veridican wrote: ↑Thu Jan 06, 2022 10:56 amMiles wrote: ↑Thu Jan 06, 2022 2:06 am
Any idea why god chose the NIV 1984 as the final authority and not the 1973, 1978, or 2011 versions?
I actually didn't know it was the 1984 ed. Until after the instruction to use it. I just thought it was the NIV. But the book he told me to use, when I looked at the copyright was 1984, and it is different than later versions of the NIV. Later versions, I must say, are pretty corrupted by modern societal requirements on things like gender.
Liturgically, the 2011 is generally better and in most cases, the gender-neutral language more reflects even conservative readings. When Paul refers to the members of the Roman church as "brothers" in Romans 1:13, for example, most interpreters think Paul was referring to Roman Christians in general, including women. When the 2011 NIV, then, has Paul specking to the "brothers and sisters," I take that as a clarification in Paul's meaning, rather than a corruption. A much broader paraphrase in the NIV 1984 is apparent in 1 Corinthians 7:39. When Paul is speaking of widows and marriage, he says that if a woman is widowed, she may marry anyone she chooses, "only in the Lord" (
μόνον ἐν κυρίῳ). What "only in the Lord" refers to here is ambiguous. The NIV treats it as referring to her new partner and paraphrases "only in the Lord" as "but he must belong to the Lord." That's a reasonable reading and presumably the one that the NIV's predominantly Calvinist and Evangelical audience would agree with, but it's not the only reasonable reading. Is she being enjoined from marrying if she herself would have to convert, for example? Does a Christian ceremony satisfy being married "only in the Lord?" Again, I wouldn't call this a corruption, but at the same time, it's no
less of a corruption than "brothers and sisters."
Overall, if I wanted to read the closest literal meaning in English, I would choose a more consistently literal translation like the NASB or ESV over the "formal equivalence" of the NIV.
Veridican wrote: ↑Thu Jan 06, 2022 10:56 amAlso, just to keep legally publishing the thing as a new edition, they have to change a certain number of words. So, they have changed words just for the sake of publishing concerns.
There's no legal standard for what constitutes a "new edition." Even if the goal is a new copyright date, the legal standard is that the change "transforms" the work in some way and the gender-neutral language alone would be enough to do that. Whether you agree with them or not, the changes made between the 1984 and 2011 editions are there because the publisher thought they belonged there, not simply for the sake of being different. Someone more cynical might suggest that the changes were to simply sell more Bibles, but if that were the case, I'd expect that Zondervan would continue selling both editions. Instead, Zondervan refuses to print or issue new licenses to the 1984 NIV text (or even to the TNIV, published between the 1984 and 2011 NIV editions). Any NIV 1984 Bibles for sale are old stock and if you don't already have an electronic NIV 1984, it's at least difficult and maybe impossible to get one legally. The last legal ebook edition I knew of that included the 1984 text was the
NIV Archaeological Study Bible, but I don't even see that one for sale anymore. If you already have a license for the 1984 edition in your Bible software, you can keep using it, but if you're starting now, you have to settle for the 2011 NIV.