Words Matter: Why We Can’t Recommend the NIV 2011

By Diane Montgomery

The most popular English Bible, the NIV 1984, has undergone a makeover and it’s not exactly a good transformation. This year, Zondervan released the new NIV 2011 which will completely replace the soon-to-be discontinued NIV 1984. This 2011 NIV is a revision of the highly controversial and inaccurate gender-neutral TNIV of 2005, which got rid of most of the uses of “him/he/his,” “brother,” “father,” and “man,” replacing them with the gender-inclusive plural “them/they” or “that person.”

The NIV’s translators, the Committee on Bible Translation (CBT),  has made some improvements from the NIV 1984, such as changing Philippians 4:13 to now read “I can do all this through him who gives me strength.” The “this” refers to contentment in all circumstances, which is the previous context rather than “I can do everything through him who gives me strength” and corrected many of the controversial gender-neutral renderings in the TNIV. However, they have still kept 75% of the 3,699 inaccurate gender-neutral translations found in the TNIV translation. These “slight” changes can make significant changes in one’s theology, teaching, personal relationship with God and in the end, the Gospel.

Here are just a few examples of these inaccurate changes:

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