NIV -- apology

["Daniel J. Berger" <bergerd@bluffton.edu>]

I apologize to those who corrected me about the NIV.  In general (having
translated literature myself) I would tend to describe something
self-described as a "thought-for-thought" translation as a paraphrase --
because a "thought-for-thought" translation is not often really possible
and can distort meaning even more than a literal translation.  Bible
scholars of my acquaintance have also described the NIV to me as a
paraphrase.  Granted, the Living Bible is even more of a paraphrase.

This is not to say that the NIV is valueless; my wife is quite fond of 
it,
and it's the version I chose for my daughter's first Bible over the NRSV. 

I also rather like the Jerusalem Bible, which is a "translation" similar 
in
purpose to the NIV.  What I am saying is that a careful word-by-word
translation may be more useful for study.  The NRSV is also quite 
readable
(unlike Young's? Literal Translation), and again it's the only readable 
one
I know of which takes care to translate the same word with the same word,

even when (as I have pointed out) this leads to odd-sounding English.

Daniel J. Berger       | PH: (419) 358-3379		
Bluffton College       | FAX:(419) 358-3323
280 W. College Avenue  | bergerd@bluffton.edu
Bluffton OH 45817-1196 | http://cs.bluffton.edu/~berger/
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