The TNIV in Romans 4:1 vís-a-vís Galatians 4:26

Romans 4:1 TNIV

What then shall we say that Abraham, the forefather of us Jews, discovered in this matter?

To begin with, this is a difficult passage both textually and hermeneutically. There are no less than four possible texts from which to translate, and it's not all that easy to express the differences between all of them in translation. In my opinion, the NIV goofed in deleting an entire phrase from the verse that wasn't even under dispute: "according to the flesh." The only question was whether this phrase modified Abraham, or what he had discovered. The NIV's "in this matter" was a rather awkward way of leaving the question open. The TNIV, at least, clarified the situation a little with an addition of their own, "of us Jews," which is undoubtedly what is meant in the manuscripts that reference Abraham as "our" ancestor. To clarify, which side of the textual question is taken by the CBT is now clear to the thinking person; but clearly both of these clarifying statements are not necessary if Abraham is the clear referent. Perhaps such verbosity will be remedied in the Newer and Improveder International Version.

UPDATE: It wasn't--quite. The 2011 NNIV reads: What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, discovered in this matter?

But it's a bit too early to leave the textual question and go on to gender sensitivity issues. Another variant in this verse is the identification of the Jewish progenitor: Is Abraham the 'father' or 'forefather' of the Jewish race? The verdict of the manuscripts is somewhat indecisive; however, the dead hand of Hort still lies heavily on the CBT, and they retain that portion of the reading of Codex Vaticanus (which, by the way, Hort followed in full by relegating 'discovered' to a marginal note in his Greek text) which agrees with most of the other Alexandrian manuscripts in reading propatora (ancestor) for patera (parent).

But oops, I've given the gender-sensitive translations of these words--not so the TNIV, which follows the NIV in rendering protatopa as 'forefather', these respective words not being found anywhere else in the New Testament, either in the TNIV or its Greek textual base. 'Ancestors' as a translation of pateres (the plural of patera) is found a few dozen times, though. So why 'forefather' and not 'ancestor' (as the NRSV)? Apparently it is there for no other reason than to indicate that the TNIV here was following the same textual base as the NIV. This, even at the expense of emphasizing Abraham's masculinity, when it was only his ancestorhood that was the point of the passage. Even Jesus didn't rate such treatment in 1 Timothy 2:5!

How about foremothers--do they ever get to be called 'ancestors'? No, alas, in the one spot where the CBT could have translated mhthr as 'ancestor', they stuck to their usual procedure of retaining all generic female references and translated Galatians 4:26 as:

"But the Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is our mother."

What's wrong with a little gender sensitivity here, for the sake of the males in the reading audience:

"But the Jerusalem that is above is free, and it is our ancestor?"

TNIV in Matthew 19:29

Matthew 19:29 And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife [a] or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.
Matthew 19:29 [a] Some manuscripts do not have or wife.

First of all, congratulations to the CBT for moving 'or wife' back into the text from the NIV margin. This is the first of the supposed 7% of changes that were textually based that I've investigated, and it finds the support of the overwhelming majority of manuscripts. Given that it is the harder reading and much more likely to have been purposely omitted, it should have never been in doubt. Certainly there is no doubt that Jesus said 'wife', as Luke 18:29 records.

But bringing back the marginalized wife brings in problems of its own. That is, it demonstrates that the gender sensitivity of the CBT is wholly one-sided. As I have demonstrated in an earlier post, the CBT is eager to read feminine inclusivity into masculine reference, but not masculine inclusivity into feminine reference--thus damning their agenda as feminist despite their vehement protests to the contrary.

Surprisingly, 'wife' was the only referent open to gender inclusion in this passage, as Jesus himself had already specified the inclusion of feminine parents and siblings. But does the CBT really believe that it is OK for a man to leave his spouse for the sake of God's kingdom, but not for a woman to leave hers? If so, Kathryn Kuhlman, who got her hundredfold--and more--in this life, looks to have missed out on inheriting life eternal; while her erstwhile husband, who supposedly left his first wife for the same reason Kathryn later left him, skates in by the skin of his teeth.

Personally, I don't see much difference in who leaves when a marriage is broken up for the sake of the Gospel. But maybe Jesus did. Yet with the one sided approach of the TNIV to gender-sensitive translation, it's impossible to detect gender emphasis in the original text. Let's try a little back-translation (a standard technique in checking the quality of a new Bible translation), and see how close we come to the original NIV.

ONIV text:
And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.

Backtranslated text, removing gender-sensitive language:
And every man who has left houses or brothers or father or sons or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.


Actual ONIV (discrepancies italicized)
And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.

Well, what do you know. The NIV was already fully gender-neutral--nothing was fixed. Furthermore, even the KJV was already correct here too; there are no generic masculines to fix:

And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.

May I suggest something for the next revision of the NIV, to replace that antiegalitarian word 'wife': a word that the CBT themselves use a lot, but has never made its way into any of their translations: spouse.

That should make things equal.

UPDATE 2012: The more things change, the more this thing remains the same. TNIV=NNIV.

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.