Most of my readers are probably well aware of the news that the TNIV will be discontinued and replaced with the NIV 2011. This new version of the NIV will be released on the 400th Anniversary of the King James Version Bible (1611).

The TNIV, despite many excellent contributions to Bible translation, has long been controversial for its gender-inclusive language. Dr. Douglas J. Moo,

chairman of the the Committee on Bible Translation (which is the body responsible for the translation) said the committee has not yet decided how much the 2011 edition will include the gender-inclusive language that riled critics of the TNIV.

“We felt certainly at the time it was the right thing to do, that the language was moving in that direction,” Moo said. “All that is back on the table as we reevaluate things this year. This has been a time over the last 15 to 20 years in which the issue of the way to handle gender in English has been very much in flux, in process, in development. And things are changing quickly and so we are going to look at all of that again as we produce the 2011 NIV.”(Ted Olsen, Christianity Today)

Doug Moo also states:

“I can predict that this is going to look 90 percent or more what the 1984 NIV looks like and 95 percent what the TNIV looks like,” he said. “The changes are going to be a very small portion of the whole Scripture package.”(Ted Olsen, Christianity Today)

Here is the official website for the upcoming NIV 2011: http://www.nivbible2011.com/.

Zondervan’s Koinonia weblog also made a post regarding this announcement.

Ted Olsen of Christianity Today carried the story, as well as Albert Mohler.

Keith Danby, CEO of Biblica (formerly the International Bible Society) stated the following:

In 1997, IBS announced that it was forgoing all plans to publish an updated NIV following criticism of the NIV inclusive language edition (NIVi) published in the United Kingdom. Quite frankly, some of the criticism was justified and we need to be brutally honest about the mistakes that were made,” Danby said. “We fell short of the trust that was placed in us. We failed to make the case for revisions and we made some important errors in the way we brought the translation to publication. We also underestimated the scale of the public affection for the NIV and failed to communicate the rationale for change in a manner that reflected that affection..”(Ted Olsen, Christianity Today)

Before finishing this brief compilation of the relevant reading material, I would like to point readers to Rick Mansfield’s thoughts and predictions regarding the matter. Mansfield has long been involved in the discussion of Bible translations and I think his predictions will be accurate.