WELS Getting More Pitiful During 400th Anniversary of the KJV, Forgotten, Like Gausewitz
As part of its work to evaluate the recently released revision of the New International Version (NIV) of the Bible, the WELS Translation Evaluation Committee met March 18 with Dr. Douglas Moo, the chairman of the Committee on Bible Translation (CBT). The CBT, which worked on the revision, is made up of 15 members from various denominations, none of which is WELS.
"We wanted to hear and get a sense from its chairman what the basic translational philosophy of the new NIV was, where it's going, and how some of the decisions were made," says Paul Wendland, chairman of the Translation Evaluation Committee and president of Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary. Two of the committee's particular concerns are how gender inclusive language is used in the revision and how the messianic prophecies are translated.
Wendland says that Moo stressed that the mission of the CBT was to put God's Word in current natural English. To help them do this, CBT members used a database of more than four billion words that provides objective information on the usage of these words in recent history. "He said it was not a matter of trying to promote an ideology," says Wendland. "It was a matter of just trying to reflect the state of our language and to render the Bible into language as it is spoken today."
Wendland says that he and the other members of the Translation Evaluation Committee were impressed by Moo and the CBT. "That doesn't mean that there won't be areas of legitimate disagreement," he says. "But my impression was that we're not seeing some insidious agenda being driven here."
Meanwhile, the WELS Translation Evaluation Committee is continuing to coordinate the work of reviewing the NIV 2011 and other translations. WELS scholars completed a book by book study of the changes in the NIV 2011 in late February; the committee is evaluating the study and the comments made on the most significant changes in the revision. Wendland says that the committee will report the results of the NIV 2011 evaluation to the districts in May and June and to the synod convention in July.
To help WELS members better understand basic translation theory, a new three-part series on translating began in the April issue of Forward in Christ.
The first article in that series as well as other articles and reports put together by the Translation Evaluation Committee are available online.
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GJ - WELSians - your objections mean nothing to these boozos. Do not order their NIV books. Do not use their NIV materials. Do not defend the butchering of God's Word.
Douglas J. Moo (b. 1950) is a Christian theologian and has been the Blanchard Professor of New Testament at Wheaton College Graduate School since 2000. He previously taught at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School for over 20 years. Moo received his Ph.D. from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland (1980).
He has published several theological works and commentaries on the Bible; notable among them are An Introduction to the New Testament and A Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans. He is currently writing commentaries on Galatians,
