Why I’m very happy with the NIV 2011

I’m very happy with the NIV 2011. There seem to be quite a few people who have some kind of small problem with it; but for me, that’s precisely the attraction: it’s not a Bible for any one small subset of the Christian community. It’s a genuine attempt at a genuinely widely useful Bible.

More than that, I think the translation is both accurate and readable. Also, and significantly, at many, many points the translators have fixed bugs in the NIV that were really irritating. It’s a fairly conservative revision, but still a very useful one.

The way they have gone for gender-inclusive language is also, for me, a win. Honestly, what’s the big problem with saying “brothers and sisters”. It’s quite clear that that is what was intended. Moreover the Greek anthropos really does mean “human being” and not “male”. But the good thing about the NIV is that they have often worked hard to preserve singularity where it is important, e.g. Psalm 1 — “blessed is the one…”

So good work. This is the Bible I’ll be using for ministry for the foreseeable future.