It occurred to me this morning that Bible translations may very well be a way to map sociological developments within evangelical Christianity in America. I think I've written here before that I believe the NIV will now steadily decline. Those over 40 will continue to use it, I suppose, until they die... maybe.
But there is now something better than it in every category, so the only ones that will continue to use it are those for whom it has become the new King James.
When I think back a couple decades, versions were a good sociological analysis even then. Fundamentalists used the King James, and evangelical pastors and lay people used the NIV. I would guess that the "missional" minded, radical Jesus People types used things like the Living Bible and Today's English Version. Scholars used the RSV and many more scholarly minded evangelicals used the NASB.
Today scholars use the NRSV. But there is no NIV equivalent for the next generation of evangelicals yet that will command as much use as the NIV had in the shift away from the KJV. Evangelical scholars, particularly those of a Calvinist or complementarian bent, now prefer the ESV. It will be a major heir of the NIV. I'm guessing that the NLT will take an equal or greater portion from older NIV and missional types. Younger fundamentalists might use the New King James or shift to the Holman Standard Bible.
No offence to the TNIV, which is much superior to the NIV, but I'm just not sure it has a power group to give it dominance. But I would be quite happy for IWU and the Wesleyan Church to start using it as a default over the NIV. Of course in this postmodern world, it remains to be seen whether there will ever be a default again.
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It also seems that the ESV will becoem the bibel of chocie for conservative evangelicals.
Do you think there is any chance that the NRSV will gain ground in The Wesleyan Church (Nazarene & Free Methodist Churches), with next year's release of the new Wesley Study Bible?
What place will the NASB hold in the future?
Yes, I mentioned that the ESV is already very popular among Calvinists and evangelical scholars with a complementarian bent. It's a very good formal equivalence NT translation, although the OT is inferior for some of the very reasons it touts itself as superior (it filters its translation of some passages through the NT rather than following the original context, e.g. Isaiah 7:14).
Todd, I don't know about this study Bible. Do tell? It's hard to see Wesleyans going with the NRSV since they didn't really ever use the RSV. It might be an option for some Free Methodists who have used the NASB.
Frankly, I would love to see us distinguish ourselves from the yahoos who created the ESV all in a fuss over the TNIV. It's a good translation, but I'm not going to use it for the time being because of the circumstances of its creation.
Caleb, the NASB was a really good formal equivalence option, the version of choice in the past for evangelicals who didn't like the thees and thous of the RSV (or who avoided it because of the political stir it caused over its accurate translation of passages like Isaiah 7:14). I just don't see the NASB going the distance against these new alternatives. It seems a little awkward to me in the way it reads at times. I am very sympathetic to its interpretation of 1 Cor. 7:36.
Wow. Most of those translations are entirely foreign to me...
I've used the NIV and NKJV most of my life- until I got a copy of my TNIV at IWU... which I really enjoy...
But... hmmmmmm...
Interesting post. Let's see how it plays out.
You might be interested in knowing about a new translation -- involving a number of evangelicals and a number of Wesleyans -- a translation that promises:
"1. Clarity of language, as in 'plain speaking'
2. A reliable, genuine, and credible power to transform lives
3. An emotional expectation to find the love of God
4. A rational expectation to find the knowledge of God."
It will be called the Common English Bible, and information about the committee, translators, etc., is available at http://www.ournewbible.com/default.htm.
On the Wesley Study Bible, see http://www.abingdonpress.com/authorList.aspx?pid=9780687645039.
Thanks for this info... be very interested to see how the CEB ends up reading...
The larger Bible question to me in the future is not about translations as much as the role of the Bible itself in study, preaching and disicipleship... will it become even more marganalized than it has already been?
Whoa! I guess I have been so enwrapped in RSV and NRSV that I have not been up to speed about all of these others. So, I know what the NIV is--I used it as a teenager.
But could you expand the acronyms for the following for me:
ESV
TNIV
NLT
I have no clue what these are.
ESV=English Standard Version
NLT=New Living Translation
TNIV=Today's NIV
Kevin Johnson was telling me today about his NT introduction class at Duke. He said the teacher spent a few minutes at the beginning of class going through historical critical issues. Then he said, but we read the Bible as Christian Scripture and the rest of class would be a theological appropriation of the text in the tradition of the flow of Christian interpretation. This is at least one trajectory that one segment of the postmodern church is on. I have a hunch the CEB Joel mentions above may be oriented around this theological interpretation of Scripture.
I find that interpreting Scripture with a dogmatic bent, which I think you are pointing out about some of the translations, are drawing the boundaries around "truth" too tightly. I am on board with Keith, as I really wonder the emphasis Scriptures will play and should play in our understanding of "truth"...
Truth can mean so many things. Truth in Scripture is even "dubious". Is truth lifestyle, dogma, historical reality, situational ethics, ethical ideals, moral guidelines or what? If it is Jesus, then which Jesus,the revolutionary, the reformer, the gnostic ideal, the perfect human, the exemplfier of moral behavior, the sage....etc.. All these understandings of truth is confined to the text, and not understanding the text within the tradition and the tradition among other traditions, and the broader issues of world history....
My question is this. Is the upcoming generations desire to transition to different Bible translations a result of the changing english language, or is it just consumerism? I think this ties in to Drury's comment in that I personally think people have confused their desire for truth with the desire to purchase the latest and greatest truth. I mean, are these translations really in competition to convey truth more clearly than the other, or to sell? Just a thought.
So that's why my wife got a free ESV at the Mothers of Preschoolers convention in Dallas...
Undoubtedly, many reasons are behind decisions related to the production of study Bibles and new translations, viability in the marketplace being one of them.
I can say that the idea for the Wesley Study Bible surfaced and grew because of our (1) recognition of the pervasive influence of the NIV Study Bible, the effect of which has been the gentle "reforming" of Christians in a Reformed direction; and (2) concomitant hope that a Wesley Study Bible would have a formative influence on congregants within the wider Wesleyan-methodist family. Before the publisher would take on the project, they did surveys and focus groups to determine the use and influence of study Bibles.
With regard to the CEB, we moved ahead largely on the basis of language-use. The research we examined indicated that the NRSV was more and more regarded as an "academic Bible," because of the difficulty of its language (vocabulary in some cases, but often due to sentence structure); and the view among many of us that the NIV, especially in the Pauline epistles, had a decidedly Reformed theological bias. The result will not be a Wesleyan-methodist translation (!), though I am hopeful that it will be more friendly to our tradition than the NIV has been. Instead, we are after a Bible that can be used widely (like the NRSV), that will be known for the naturalness of its language (unlike the NRSV, more like the NIV was when it was first released).
Thanks for the background. Sometime I'd love to hear your thoughts on how to translate the OT (e.g., Isaiah 7:14) with Christian theological hermeneutics in view. Do you go with virgin (the Christian reading) or with young woman (the original reading)?
Thanks...
Well in the writing and publishing of new translations I'm sure there is a mix of good intentions as well as sales potential. What worries me more is that in our consumer culture people are mistaking purchasing a bible with the discipline of reading the Bible. Thats why when they hear a sermon on the discipline of reading scripture their gut instinct is to go out and buy a new Bible... even though they have 4 sitting on the shelf.
Obviously there is need for us to clearly translate God's word, but are we catering to a consumer culture by creating new translations more and more often? Are we undermining the value of Scripture by giving it a shorter and shorter "shelf life"?
I would love for Keith (or you) to follow up on his comment about the marginalization of the Bible. I presume he means that we turn to other materials for preaching, and for devotional material, or just ignore it, but I would love to have this elaborated on.
Also, the term complementarian is new to me. What does that mean?
JM, I'm not sure if I agree with Keith or not on the future role of the Bible. But I think he's thinking that the more we recognize that what we have been calling "the Bible" is more accurately our theological reading of the Bible, the focus of ministerial education and the life of the church will shift more to our theology than the kind of mirror readings of the biblical text that we now do, a kind of game where we pretend like we are getting our thinking from the Bible but are more accurately joining what we already think to the words of the Bible.
The complimentarian view sees husband and wife as equal but with very distinct roles. The wife is subordinate to the husband but equal in value. Similarly, the husband is the authority over the wife, but no more valuable.
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