Is the Bible inerrant?
- By RamiC
- Bridge Builders - Moderate Christians
- 74 Replies
Could the guest speakers have been trying to sell other versions of the Bible? If some people at your church might have bought one, that is fine activity, but you do not need to let it prevent you from just using the best one for you.My church really endorses NIV which is contrary to their guest speakers. It is non-denominational.
NIV Bible - New International Version - they have a fine looking website there, with a blog that looks especially helpful for articles about application to life.
What is the New International Version (NIV)? | GotQuestions.org - and here is Got Questions? website on the NIV.
This is an easy summary of different translation styles:
- Formal Translation: A very word-for-word translation that often uses formal, more archaic language (example: the King James Version or NASB);
- Dynamic Translation: A thought-for-thought translation (example: NIV or NLT);
- Paraphrase Translation: An idea-for-idea translation that involves much more interpretation from the translator (example: The Message);
NIV is a Dynamic translation, so it is formed in English to blend easy readability with what the original languages said. Here is the NIV websites' own answer about which original texts were used "The translators of the NIV have used the Old Testament and New Testament texts that are widely accepted among modern scholars as giving the committee the best possible access to what God inspired in the original documents.
For the Old Testament the Masoretic Text, the standard Hebrew text as published in the latest edition of Biblia Hebraica, has been used throughout. The NIV translators have sometimes used variants of the Hebrew Masoretic tradition or other ancient versions, where these seemed to provide a superior text than the Masoretic tradition. These are all noted in the NIV translator footnotes that appear at the bottom of the page of the text that they reference.
For the New Testament, the translators have used the accepted Greek New Testament text as printed in the Nestle-Aland and United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testaments. Here also the translators have occasionally accepted a variant printed in these editions. Footnotes usually indicate the options in each case."
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