Revisions of the KJV continued beyond the Revised Version (1885). At the beginning of the 20^th century the American Standard  was released as a further revision. Then, in 1952, the Revised Standard Version. In 1971 both the New American Standard Version and the King James II Version were released and in 1982 the New King James Version. In 1989 the New Revised Standard Version. Most recently, in 2001 the English Standard Version was published. It is important to note that all versions just mentioned stand in the line of the KJV and are revisions of it and of its revisions. For example, the ESV is something like 80% the same as the RSV.

None of those translations, however, with the possible exception of the RSV and the ESV, impacted the church as much as the translation that was released in 1978, The New International Version. It was the Christian Reformed Church and the National Association of Evangelicals who first raised some questions about the existing translations in relation to the modern speech of the day and it was these questions that led to the translation of the Bible that has become a staple in the evangelical church of the twenty-first century.

The NIV was an entirely fresh and new translation of the Bible. It had no dependence on prior translations as did the previous mentioned translation, but was rather the work of 110 evangelical international translators. What’s more, at many key points it departed from the KJV family in manuscript dependence. As with the KJV, translators were divided into smaller groups to work on smaller sections of the text. In this case translators “were divided into twenty teams composed of a translator, cotranslator, two consultants, and an English stylist appointed to each team” (Paul Wegner, The Journey from Texts to Translations: The Origin and Development of the Bible, 380). From here the work was submitted to an editorial committee and then to a committee of critics from all walks of life. It was finally reviewed by a committee of 15 and then evaluated by literary consultants. Speaking of this process, Sake Kubo notes, “It is difficult to conceive a plan that could have better checks and balances than the one used” (in Wegner, 380). This is important to note because of all the slanderous and malicious accusations made by KJV only advocates. KJV advocates believe that the KJV is the only English Bible to be read and that it, not the original autographs as we suggest, is inspired. Further, they suggest that there was a satanic conspiracy behind the translation of the NIV and because of this and the corruption of the translators themselves and a number of other issues (sigh), the NIV cannot be trusted. It still remains unclear what the KJV only advocates believe about the assassination of JFK and whether or not 9/11 was an inside job.

Although the NIV has often been branded a less-than-literal translation of the Bible by those who don’t know the first thing about Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, let alone of the theory and practice of translation in general, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, it is not really that much of a dynamic equivalent translation in contrast to a “literal” one. While I have not compared every text, among those I have, I have found it to be very close to the ESV. The NIV is a solid translation of the Bible that has stood the test of time. Take it up and read.