Someone on CRC Voices posted someone’s review of the 2011NIV.

I’ve been playing with the 2011 NIV for a couple of months now. I’ve been fairly pleased with it but, as the article says, all translations are translations.

Pastors and scholars will pay close attention to details.

In my experience most of the lay people who just read it glaze over most of the details and read what they imagine it is going to say. Sometimes someone will STUDY it and pay close attention to grammar and syntax, and there of course comes the nub of the problem. They will create some insight or conclusion on their close reading of the text and trot off with it in joy. On one hand we want them to study it. We are always telling them to study or at least to listen closely to our study of it but then when they do it they develop some heresy that is at least new to them. We set them straight based on our own “more learned study” (original languages, commentaries, etc.) and what we’ve really taught them is to not bother studying but to just ask us or pick up a commentary or a book by NT Wright.

So what we usually REALLY want is for them to accept what we tell them, and if they “study” we hope it confirms what we “experts” have already taught them, which means, again, when they read they are basically finding in the text what they expect to find in it, not what the text is saying. So much for the Protestant Reformation. 🙂

Most of the detail differences in translations don’t get caught in the riffles in the sluices (watching too many discovery channel gold shows lately). pvk