Next NIV Bible drops gender neutrality

By Manya A. Brachear - Chicago Tribune

Earler this month, biblical publishers and scholars announced that a new New International Version will be unveiled in 2011, the first overall update of the modern translation since 1984. But don't look for androgynous vocabulary in the new edition. In fact, as soon as it's published, the gender-neutral NIV that rankled some evangelicals in 2005 will vanish.

"If we want to maintain the NIV as a Bible that English speakers around the world can understand, we have to listen to and respect the vocabulary they are using today," said Keith Danby, president of Biblica, formerly the International Bible Society, during a news conference at Trinity Christian College in Palos Heights, Ill.

New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman, author of Misquoting Jesus and Jesus Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible, doubts the revision has as much to do with the evolution of the English language as the orthodox trends in evangelical thought.

Verse vs. verse
An example from the original NIV text compared to the gender-neutral version.
Psalm 8:4
NIV: What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?
Gender-neutral: What are mere mortals that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?

"They are changing the gender-neutral language, no doubt, because their 'base' is conservative evangelical Christians who are offended by anything that appears to have a feminist agenda behind it, not because the language has changed," Ehrman said. "If it has changed, of course, it has changed toward greater gender neutrality — except in religiously and politically conservative circles."