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Dr. Poythress assumes that the guiding principle behind the TNIV is to avoid offense. This is wrong. The guiding principle is to translate God's Word as accurately as possible. I am sure that Paul's condemnation of homosexual behavior, his commands for wives to submit to their husbands, and his assertion that the husband is the head of the wife are just as offensive in the TNIV as in the NIV. The TNIV does not update the meaning of the text, but communicates the original meaning in today's language.

Dr. Poythress is concerned about losing "details of meaning." So am I. This is precisely why the TNIV is needed. English has changed, so that when people read the NIV's man, many hear male instead of Paul's meaning, person. This is a significant loss of meaning. Thirty years ago the NIV translators meant for words like man and brother to be understood generically. Generic means referring to people in general. The problem is these words no longer sound generic to many readers, potentially misrepresenting the author's intention.

Now a new twist: Dr. Poythress claims that these are not true generics at all, but male representative words, where a male example teaches a general principle. But he offers no evidence for this theory, nor any criteria for determining when a passage is a male representative. Then he claims the TNIV distorts the meaning by using a true generic!

Dr. Poythress repeatedly calls for the retention of Greek forms (person, number, etc.). But the NIV has always been a meaning-based translation (the philosophy of most international Bible translation). The TNIV continues this tradition.

I should add that I do not believe the TNIV always gets it right. Like every translation, the TNIV was produced by fallible people wrestling with difficult interpretive decisions. Yet in every passage opponents cite, the TNIV represents a legitimate interpretation.

For example, scholars have long recognized that the Greek dative heauto in 1 Corinthians 14:28 probably means "by himself" (= "when alone") rather than "to himself," since it stands in contrast to "in the church" (see A. Robertson and A. Plummer, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the First Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians [ICC; T&T Clark, 1911] 321; G. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians [NIC; Eerdmans, 1987] 693).

Dr. Poythress's claim that the Greek "unambiguously" means "to himself" is wrong. The same can be said of Hebrews 2:6-9, a passage often cited by TNIV opponents. As conservative a commentator as John MacArthur Jr. recognizes that Psalm 8 is cited in Heb. 2:6-7 with reference to humanity, and then applied to Jesus in verse 9 (so TNIV) (John MacArthur Jr., Hebrews [Moody, 1983] 45).

After a well-intended but misguided media campaign against the TNIV, the tide seems to be shifting to a more thoughtful approach, with leading evangelical New Testament scholars—D. A. Carson (Trinity International UNIVersity), Craig Blomberg (Denver Seminary), Darrell Bock (Dallas Theological Seminary), and others—weighing in with substantial scholarly papers (see www.TNIV.info). Books by Dr. Carson and myself also provide readers with linguistic tools to investigate this issue (Mark L. Strauss, Distorting Scripture? The Challenge of Bible Translation and Gender Accuracy [InterVarsity Press, 1998]; D. A. Carson, The Inclusive Language Debate: A Plea for Realism [Baker, 1998]).

In time this translation controversy will pass—like those surrounding John Wycliffe, William Tyndale, and others. And through it all, translators will continue the challenging task of rendering God's Word into the language of the day.

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October 7 2002, Vol. 46, No. 11