Tuesday, February 22, 2005

My take on the TNIV

I've been following some of the dialogue about the TNIV discussion lately:
One of the summaries against it.
Here is one from Mark D. Roberts, pastor in Southern California.
And here is another one from Tim Bednar, from e-church.com.
It irritates me. But first, here is what I know:
- I'm not Biblical scholar.
- I got a free TNIV NT from the Mosaic Regional Conference in Florida. I really like it. It's even leather bound and its got the cool Origins logo on it.
- When I was at Borders a few weeks ago, there were literally 30-40 Bibles to choose from. Everything from the Businessmans Bible to the Homemakers Bible to the Bible for Harry Potter fans. (Ok, maybe not the last one.) Seriously, you want to talk about the Christian ghetto marketing itself? Talk about Bible product lines instead of marketing the Purpose Driven brand.
I guess what really iritates me about this whole discussion is this: The fact that there are still three thousand people groups that do not have any Bible in their language. I will write it again so you can read it again. 3000 people groups. Yeah. 3000.
So lets get this straight. The argument is about a translation of the Bible in English. And there are 3000 people groups with no translation at all. 3000 people groups that have a ZERO percentage that they will understand the name of Jesus. And for all the writing about the TNIV, how fast is progress for these Bibleless people groups?
If we claim to be Christians, if we are sincere about following Jesus, do we think that He might care more about a spectrum of people on the Earth that have no access to His Word, versus the political correctness of one translation out of 20 to the English speaking world?
Wycliffe has a great interactive map where you can learn more about the Bibleless Peoples Project.

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