Sermon Tone Analysis

Revelation 22:18, 19

Tampering With the Book

 

I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this scroll: If any one of you adds anything to them, God will add to you the plagues described in this scroll.

And if any one of you takes words away from this scroll of prophecy, God will take away from you your share in the tree of life and in the Holy City, which are described in this scroll [tniv ].[1]

 

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*his generation of Christian parents faces an age-old challenge of faith: Will our sons and daughters put their faith in Christ, or will they be a generation that blends invisibly into a world that considers the Bible to be irrelevant*?

This was the opening quote of a cover letter included together with a copy of a changed translation which arrived at my home a few days ago.

The binder holding my review copy of what is being sold as Today’s New International Version New Testament carries the following statement on the front cover.

*Making sure the faith of our fathers becomes the faith of our children*.

Obviously, the International Bible Society and Zondervan Bible Publishers want to put pastors at ease.

The Bible they have just released is the reason a growing number of pastors are becoming ill at ease.

Indeed, it is the release of this new Bible, heralded in the print and electronic media a couple of months past, which serve as the genesis for the homily this day.

For Christians interested in the direction culture proceeds, few issues are more basic than how the Bible gets translated.

The Bible, we believe, is our only ultimate rule of both faith and practise.

It tells us what we are to believe about God, and it reveals to us the rules He has established if we are to live happily and productively with each other.

The Bible is what keeps us from being relativists on all such issues.

The Bible is what tells us that racism is wrong, that treating the poor with compassion is right, and that God has ordained distinctions between male and female for the good of His creation.

It’s from the Bible that we learn that cheating and adultery and drunkenness are destructive, and that a servant spirit, honouring your parents, and thriftiness will be rewarded.

Any Bible that purports to tell you all those things had better be accurate and consistent.

It can’t take one position on a theological or cultural or social issue this year, and then do an about face on the same matter in the next edition.

Five years ago, *WORLD* magazine grabbed the attention of the evangelical world with a series of major articles about the New International Version of the Bible.

*WORLD* made three major points: (1) Plans were afoot to publish a revised niv that would make a point of using “gender-neutral” language; (2) the language in mind was strongly influenced not just by translation principles, but by feminist ideology; and (3) the effort was being clothed in secrecy.[2]

Immediately, the translating committee and the publisher behind the new translation denied all three assertions.

But within two months, all three assertions were proven true.

The publishers publicly withdrew their plans, and publicly announced that all such plans were cancelled.

Now, amazingly, they have gone there again.

And incredibly, this Bible story freshly issued this year has the same three points: (1) The International Bible Society and Zondervan Publishing House are indeed publishing a gender-inclusive Bible; (2) the changes betray a strong feminist bias; and (3) the project has been carried out in secret.

In effect, the message this morning is a statement of my disturbing doubts concerning what should be a source of confidence for a pastor.

I ask you to carefully listen as I detail my concerns, for ultimately they must have an impact, not only on my choice of a Bible for devotions and preaching, but also on the direction of the congregation in days to come.

Profits, Lies and Bible Translation — Years ago, the Zondervan brothers began a ministry of providing books to the Evangelical world.

Their work grew to become Zondervan Publishers, which was bought out by Harper and Row in 1988.

Today, HarperCollins owns Zondervan Bible Publishers and all the Zondervan Book Stores.

This information is important to us as Christians, because it would lead to the conclusion that decisions at Zondervan are not necessarily based upon Christian principle, but rather that the ability to gain market presence and promote sales drive decisions.

We must grieve at the decline of publishers that once did great work.

Five years ago, Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family hosted in Colorado Springs a meeting of Bible scholars and leaders of various evangelical organisations with representatives of IBS, Zondervan, and the Committee on Bible Translation.

In that meeting, those individuals hammered out guidelines requiring Bible translators to stick as closely as possible to the language of the original Bible texts, regardless of the demands of current pressure groups.

As result of those meetings, the IBS board announced that it had “abandoned all plans for gender-related changes in future editions” of the niv.

What’s clear now is that IBS agreed to these particular guidelines and this particular action not because of any change of heart, but because many Christian groups threatened to boycott its products, following *WORLD*’s disclosure in March 1997 that IBS planned to move the niv in a unisex direction.

Among those alarmed at the decision to rewrite the Bible to make it acceptable to contemporary culture was LifeWay Publishers (representing the Southern Baptist Convention) and Focus on the Family.

Together with other conservative Bible believers, they stated their intention to review their use of the niv if this gender-neutral Bible were produced in North America.

One could easily wonder about IBS’s honesty ever since *WORLD* discovered in 1999 a letter from Eugene Rugingh, IBS vice president for translations, stating that the goal of a gender-revised translation remained, with the matter only “one of timing, of finding the appropriate hour to move ahead.”

That time is apparently now.

Sales beckon, even though, as Southern Seminary President Albert Mohler notes, those who deliberately translated in accordance with their biases “insult the very character of the Bible as the eternal, inerrant, and authoritative Word of God.[3]

This time, at least, there’s no debate over whether such a project is in the works.

The International Bible Society and Zondervan have made clear their intentions; the New Testament of Today’s NIV has now been released, and the whole Bible will be released in a year or two.

The publisher is forthright in admitting that one of the distinctives of the new edition is its gender-inclusive language.

I confess that I am uncomfortable depending upon Zondervan Publishers and the International Bible Society, to say nothing of the Committee on Bible Translation.

It is clear that they gave their word concerning this new translation, and at the very least, they have now intentionally broken their word.

This is sufficiently problematic to make me cautious about relying upon their promises in the future.

However, the damage is compounded by the fact that it is now apparent that they never intended to cease producing and promoting a gender-neutral version of the Bible.

In other words, these Bible translators, Bible publishers and Bible society members deliberately lied to the evangelical community in order to continue their work secretly.

Witnessing this nefarious seduction of God’s people through deliberate lies and intentional distortions, I am reminded of the words of Jude, the half-brother of our Lord.

Jude wrote: Dear friends, although I was eager to write you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write and exhort you to contend for the faith that was delivered to the saints once for all.

For *certain men who were designated for this judgement have come in by stealth; they are ungodly, turning the grace of our God into promiscuity* and denying our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ [*Jude 3, 4 *hcsv].

People upon whom the evangelical community depend for honest, forthright handling of the Word of God have deliberately deceived the Bible-reading public through insinuating themselves surreptitiously into a position of responsibility and authority and then twisting their own promises until they can convince themselves that they have kept their word.

All the while they have deceived Christians.

Their furtive work brings to mind Peter’s warning.

There were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you.

They will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, and will bring swift destruction on themselves.

Many will follow their unrestrained ways, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed.

*In their greed they will exploit you with deceptive words*.

Their condemnation, pronounced long ago, is not idle, and their destruction does not sleep [*2 Peter 2:1-3 *hcsv].

The first question to be answered is, Should we trust the International Bible Society?

The former president of the IBS, together with its translating committee, signed a document affirming agreement with guidelines for translating gender-related language in Scripture.

Members of its own translation committee helped draft those guidelines.

Now, it is clear that all the while they continued their work of “regenderising” the Bible, violating the 1997 guidelines which they themselves helped draft.

Before issuing the press notices of the release of the tniv, Peter Bradley, current IBS president, said the IBS as a matter of “integrity” was withdrawing its endorsement of the 1997 agreement.

Those guidelines, he argued, conflict with those of the IBS’s Committee for Bible Translation.

Thus, he announced that IBS was withdrawing from the agreement in order to resolve its dilemma.

He did not explain why IBS had waited years to come clean with evangelical Christians.[4]

All the preparation for release of this new Bible has been done in extraordinary secrecy.

Given the disagreements over the issue five years ago, why should it have been so difficult of IBS and Zondervan to approach some of those they knew were most troubled by the earlier effort, saying, “We still think such a contemporary version is important.

Would you help us find the best and most balanced approach?”

Instead, the sponsors of the effort have behaved as if the Bible were their proprietary possession.

This seems a strange way to build the trust of the Bible buying public.

Trust is perhaps the biggest asset the vendor of any product or service can bring to the customer.

If that product or service happens to be the Bible and the translation process shaping that Bible, then trust becomes a paramount issue.

Some of us find it hard to comprehend how the publishers of the TNIV would—for the second time in five years—play so fast and so loose with the trust it took a whole generation to build.[5]

Cultural Influence in Translating — Bible translators have always struggled to ensure that the Bible communicates to readers.

A word-for-word translation, known as formal equivalence, tends to read rather woodenly and often misses the goal of communicating because meaning is not always communicated precisely by the words.

An English colloquialism, such as the common invitation, *Make yourself at home*, communicates quite well to people raised within North American culture.

The invitation puts a guest at ease.

Translated into another language, it could communicate something entirely different.

Translated literally into Spanish, the invitation would be rather strange, though Spanish does have the invitation, *Mi casa es su casa*.

In order to address this translation difficulty, Bible translators may move toward what is referred to as a dynamic equivalent.

In other words, they attempt to communicate the meaning of the writer instead of the words of the writer.

Of necessity, this effort involves a degree of interpretation.

Most translators agree that there must be a balance between the two extremes in order to ensure the highest degree of accuracy in translation.

The more accurately a Bible is translated, the more it will preserve the very words which the writer set in place.

The more a Bible moves toward a dynamic equivalent, the greater the interpretation introduced into the translation effort.

The niv was more of a dynamic equivalent translation than was the King James Version of an earlier era.

Now, the tniv moves even farther toward including the translators’ interpretation.

It does so in great measure by adapting itself to cultural battles which are even now raging.

The IBS and CBT bristle at the assertion that many of the changes in the tniv spring from a feminist bias.

The publisher argues vigorously that they would never change any masculine references to God or Jesus.

But where *John 6:33* in the original niv says quite directly that the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world, the tniv changes a couple of crucial words.

It reads, the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.

A footnote to the words that which explains almost too revealingly: “The Greek for that which can also mean he who.”

So, since the reference is so clearly to Jesus, why the need for eliminating the masculine pronoun?

The evidence is overwhelming.