The TNIV in Luke 12:45

KJV "But and if that servant say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming; and shall begin to beat the menservants and maidens, and to eat and drink, and to be drunken;"

TNIV Luke 12:45 "But suppose the servant says to himself, 'My master is taking a long time in coming,' and he then begins to beat the other servants, both men and women, and to eat and drink and get drunk."

Here is a typical case of overkill. In an attempt to fix what wasn't broken (KJV has 'men servants and maidens', NIV has 'menservants and womenservants), the CBT has changed the whole meaning of the passage, which speaks of a servant (the Greek word doulos is only used in the first clause of the verse) who is put in authority.

The Cotton Patch Version might have been expected to do a better job on this passage, and indeed it does show (with gender inclusivity on the part of the beaten servants taken for granted) the relative position of 'the servant' to 'the other servants', a distinction now lost in the TNIV:

"But if that worker begins to say to himself, 'My boss will be late this morning,' and starts throwing his weight around and abusing those under him, then he goes out to get something to eat and a few beers. . . ."

But both versions fail to capitalize on the opportunity to relate this parable to a setting very close to the mind of the English reader, especially if he or she is from the Southern U.S.: the setting is of SLAVERY, not the corner office. Let me show how it could be translated, in a way that would far better reproduce its effect on Jesus' hearers:

"But suppose the overseer says to himself, 'Master is taking a long time to get back,' and begins to beat up the slaves--both men and women--and to eat and drink and get drunk."

Alas, not only did the TNIV demote the overseerer to a fellow slave, they even preserved his masculinity--thus proving that the masculine gender is STILL the gender of generic reference, and substituting the anaphoric pronoun 'them' for 'him' everywhere it occurrs in generic usage does nothing to avoid the offense here of a MALE supervisor beating up on his FEMALE underlings.

Actually, the Cotton Patch account is more gender-neutral than even the TNIV, and with the "ex uno plura" magic of just a little bit of CBT grammarspeak, it can be fixed up to remove all possible offense:

"But if that worker begins to say to themself, 'My boss will be late this morning,' and starts throwing their weight around and abusing their underlings, and goes out to get something to eat and a few beers. . . ."

But we don't speak that way yet in English. Possibly some teenagers do, but as long as they insist on universal gender equality they will find no solace even in that pinnacle of teenspeak, The Message:

45"But if he says to himself, 'The master is certainly taking his time,' begins maltreating the servants and maids, throws parties for his friends, and gets drunk. . . ."

Update: I failed to notice until now the obvious influence of the parallel passage on this parable. No doubt textual critics centuries from now will note that the TNIV editors were probably influenced by the wording of their translation of Matthew 24:49--
"and he then begins to beat his fellow servants and to eat and drink with drunkards."

The TNIV in Malachi 4:6

Malachi 4: 6 "He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents; or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction."

Let it not be said that I am on a mission to totally discredit the TNIV. In fact, having researched the revision 4 years ago and found it wanting, I had pretty much put it out of my mind as "not for me," until along came this Symposium earnestly trying to convince me otherwise. So I returned to the subject, and this time found wanting not only the revision itself, but all the more so its proponents and their futile arguments favouring it above all its predecessors.

But here I find the TNIV to be a most excellent translation, and fault the KJV, like as the NIV, for gender-neutralizing 'sons' without completing the parallelism by doing the same for 'fathers'. Nor can I find fault with the translation of erets as 'land' instead of the potentially misleading 'earth'. And I trust that the erudite minds of the CBT were correct in changing the 'curse' of the KJV/NIV to 'total destruction'--not because they have earned that trust, but because in fact the typical connotation of cherem in the OT is that of the results of a curse, not of the curse itself. While I find 'or else' rather jarring to the ear, at least in this case the damage had already been done in the NIV, so I can fault the CBT here only for not revising enough, rather than too much.

Had the CBT confined themselves to repairing only those places in which the KJV and the NIV shared a deficiency of translation--places in which the former translations were themselves inconsistent or misleading--then I could indeed concur that its good points outweigh the bad. But instances of the one are few and far between, and totally overshadowed by the other. Thus I will continue to study the TNIV as I do the LXX--with both eyes open, pen in hand, and a shelf of reference books within easy reach. But I cannot view the translations in the same vien (although the claims of both versions' proponents are perhaps equally exaggerated), for while the LXX represents but the rudimentary first step in of the art of Bible translation, the TNIV is now set before us as its pinnacle.


Update:
I failed to notice at first that the TNIV NT had preceded the Malachi translation with the same wording in Luke 1:17--where, interestingly enough, the Greek word is the one for 'children', rather than 'sons'.

Update June 2012:
 Neither the KJV nor the NIV follow the Masoretic text at the end of Malachi, where it repeats v. 5 following v. 6, due to a Masoretic custom not to end any book of the Bible on a negative note. The Complete Jewish Bible follows the MT here and the three other places, with the repeated verse in smaller type.

The TNIV in John 6:33

John 6:33 "For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world."

The second use of 'bread' here in the TNIV is insightful. Both the NKJV and the NIV had "for the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven," referring to Christ himself.

So, contrary to their claims, the CBT have removed a masculine reference to God ('he') and replaced it with a genderless noun. And yet they scoffed at the KJV for using "which!"

This was not only deliberate, but given that they have so strenuously denied doing any such thing, it can only be considered deceptive as well.

UPDATE 2013: Unchanged in the NNIV.

The TNIV in Hebrews 11:35 and Luke 12:14

Hebrews 11:35 "Women [gunaikes] received back their dead, raised to life again. There were others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection. "

Why 'women'? If 'men' can sometimes mean 'men and women' in context, then why, in the name of gender sensitivity, can't in contexts like this 'women' mean 'men and women' too? Do the CBT really believe that only women can be bereaved? Did not both Abraham and Jacob receive their sons back, as it were, from the dead? Were they not both men? How about the Prodigal's father?

Update: It was starting to look like the CBT always translates gyn- as 'woman', but never anthrop- as 'man,' when I ran across Luke 12:

13 Someone in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me."
14 Jesus replied, "Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?" 15 Then he said to them, "Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions."

Jesus' first word in v. 14 is anthrowpe, which the CBT usually avoids translating in the male gender whenever possible--even when referring to Jesus if it is his humanity that is primarily in view, rather than his masculinity. But this instance is ironic. Nothing in the passage itself, nor in its immediate context, indicates that the person Jesus addressed, or even that person's sibling, was specifically male. Only a cultural understanding of Jesus' audience would have indicated that only sons inherited from their fathers (but see Job 42:15 for several notable exceptions!). That same cultural understanding, however, seems to have failed to inform the CBT that the women in Acts 1 did not vote in church business meetings!

Once one breaks free from the moorings of normal meanings of words, anything is possible, but nothing is certain.

The TNIV in John 15:26

"When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—he will testify about me."


The TNIV breaks from the KJV/NIV in this verse to identify Jesus' name for the Holy Spirit as "Advocate" rather than "Comforter." While this would seem a better translation into standard English of the Greek word 'parakletos,' I can't help but comment on how this verse nonetheless points out an inconsistency in the TNIV's treatment of grammatical gender.

Promotors of the TNIV would assure us that they have not, like some gender-corrected translators, given us a bible that at all diminishes God's masculinity. To quote John Kohlenburger III:

"Gender inclusive translations like the TNIV do not dabble with God language. When God describes himself as a Father or husband--or even compares himself to a comforting mother in Isaiah 66--these images are retained."

But is God exclusively masculine?

The TNIV gender-sensitizes Genesis 1:27 as follows:

So God created human beings [KJV, NIV 'man'] in his own image, in the image of God he created them [KJV, NIV 'him']; male and female he created them.

So, more blatantly than does the NIV (which is exactly the same as the NKJV here), the TNIV states that God's image was reflected in both the male AND the female that He created. So if God's image is feminine as well as masculine, what's wrong with using feminine language for God?

Obviously the Father and Son always take masculine singular modifiers in Scripture, but how about the Spirit? As the TNIV advocates point out, the Holy Spirit is grammatically feminine in the OT and neuter in the NT, yet they criticize the KJV for using neuter language in the NT for the Holy Spirit. But why in the name of gender accuracy does the TNIV translate as if the Holy Spirit is masculine instead? They would have been no less accurate in using feminine language for the Holy Spirit in the NT; even more accurate in the OT, except that there don't appear to be any OT passages where the gender of the Holy Spirit would come through in English translation.

By using masculine language in John 15:26, the TNIV makes no improvement on the KJV. And in Acts 11:15, it perpetuates the error of the NIV by inserting masculine language in reference to the Holy Spirit where the KJV has none!

The TNIV translators have tried both to produce a more accurate translation, and to avoid assigning male gender to their translation of Greek words that don't require it, but here they have once again failed at both.