I Just Bought a New Bible

Despite what people might have thought after my last blog post about "being biblical," the Bible is actually quite important to me. I care deeply that people read, consider, and treasure the Bible. In my own life, I don't think anything has formed me more than the Bible has.

For this reason, I get irked when I see shit like this:

On sale at Sam's Club, of course.

We would all consider Thomas Jefferson an American Patriot, right? I wonder if this Bible is anything like his Jefferson Bible?

Anyway, I'm making a shift in the Bible I use. Not to The American Patriot's Bible, but to the new NIV.

When it comes to Bible translation, I am in the camp of people who think we ought to give equal weight to both languages involved in the translation. Many translations, such as the New King James and New American Standard, are very faithful to the original languages but lack readability in English. Others, like The Message and New Living Translation, come off in English as way too forced and campy to be taken seriously.

I'm a gender-nuetral egalitarian kind of guy. I think it's respectful and important to use language that doesn't alienate people through its insensitivity to the ways in which our culture has changed. I want a Bible that reads like I try to speak.

So, since Vintage Fellowship started, I have used and preached from the TNIV - Today's New International Version of the Bible. It's the very popular NIV with special consideration given to egalitarian sensibilities. (The fact that the TNIV has been condemned by the fundamentalist types made it only that much more appealing.)

So now, a new NIV is being released, one that combines most of the gender neutrality of the TNIV with the popularity of the NIV. I'm in.

It won't be out in hardcopy until March, but I just bought it in my Bible app, and will preach from tomorrow.

Here's a very good article detailing what to expect in the new NIV.

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