CBE post on best Bibles
A post on the CBE (Christians for Biblical Equality) blog objected to the ESV and HCSB being finalists for the Evangelical Christian Publishing Association's Christian Book Awards. The ESV and HCSB are the only two English Bible versions translated according to the CSG (Colorado Springs Guidelines) which are primarily about maintaining masculinity in English Bibles.
CBMW (complementarians) would object if the TNIV were nominated for the same award. CBMW websites have a great deal of material criticizing the TNIV.
I wonder if some who are candidating as pastors of churches these days are being asked which versions of the Bible they approve and disapprove of. Sigh! I hope that true biblical scholarship can win out in the end in these debates and that we can move on to matters which are more important to work in the Kingdom of God, not the least of which would be putting some of the millions of dollars spent creating "proper" Bibles and channeling a good percentage of that money to translating the Bible for people who have no Bible in their language.
I wonder if we are now paying the price for having too many Bible versions in English. Perhaps we have become immune to how much there is in common among all of them, even when different versions are not approved of by groups like CBE or CBMW.
CBMW (complementarians) would object if the TNIV were nominated for the same award. CBMW websites have a great deal of material criticizing the TNIV.
I wonder if some who are candidating as pastors of churches these days are being asked which versions of the Bible they approve and disapprove of. Sigh! I hope that true biblical scholarship can win out in the end in these debates and that we can move on to matters which are more important to work in the Kingdom of God, not the least of which would be putting some of the millions of dollars spent creating "proper" Bibles and channeling a good percentage of that money to translating the Bible for people who have no Bible in their language.
I wonder if we are now paying the price for having too many Bible versions in English. Perhaps we have become immune to how much there is in common among all of them, even when different versions are not approved of by groups like CBE or CBMW.
posted by Wayne Leman at 4:02 PM
3 Comments:
Wait, I don't understand. The Message and the NIrV were also finalists, and they have inclusive language. Actually, an edition of The Message won.
I suspect that each ideological side would object if a Bible version is a finalist or a winner which does not have the kind of gender language they prefer.
I find it so interesting that so many Christian bookstores amply stock The Message and NLT but continue to boycott of the TNIV, when they all use the same kind of inclusive language. Rick Mansfield blogged recently on that inconsistency. I sometimes ask store personnel about their not stocking the TNIV and the answer I get now is "It's a corporate decision." Hmm, I already knew that. I think it's a way of avoiding answering directly.
There's room for two books to be written. We need a book like Carson's and Strauss' books on inclusive language, but that specifically addresses the TNIV, written at the midrange to academic level. Then there needs to be a similar version of the same book written to the average layperson who is not going to interact with the original languages to a high degree.
For what it's worth, every NIV or TNIV Bible sold contributes a percentage of profits to the International Bible Society. When I think of that, I fell better about the NIV being the top-selling translation.
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