Scholar compares TNIV critics to Tyndale's crit

May 27, 2002

Scholar compares TNIV critics to Tyndale's critics
___By Gregory Tomlin
___Southwestern Seminary
___IRVINE, Calif. (BP)--Those who oppose the Today's New International Version of the Bible will be remembered and spoken of in the same breath with those who burned William Tyndale at the stake, according to a professor at Bethel Theological Seminary.
___Mark Strauss, a professor of New Testament at the San Diego seminary, made the comment during a May 21 Internet webcast debate about the TNIV with Wayne Grudem, past president of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and an outspoken critic of attempts to update biblical language related to gender.
___"I guess we should be grateful--as Bruce Metzger points out--that at least today they only burn the translations and not the translators. I'd be afraid if I saw them building a bonfire outside tonight," Strauss said.
___Grudem, research professor of theology and Bible at Phoenix Seminary, responded to Strauss' comment, saying that those who opposed Tyndale and his translation did not want the Bible in the hands of the laity.
___"They thought laypeople could not understand Scripture. That was a wrong motive," Grudem said. "It really troubled me when Dr. Strauss said that I and those who oppose the TNIV will be remembered along with those who opposed William Tyndale. Those were terrible motives to keep the word of God from people and terrible moves--burning people at the stake. It troubles me that he could say that about those of us who are opposed."
___Strauss, who holds a Ph.D. from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, said he was deeply concerned about the precedent being set by those attacking the TNIV. Critics, he said, "are, after all, attacking a highly accurate expression of God's inspired and authoritative word."
___Worse than that, Strauss said, was that criticism of the TNIV is unfounded and based on misperceptions. Most critics, he said, haven't even seen the updated translation to be published by the same group that publishes the best-selling New International Version of the Bible. Strauss has seen the translation and referred to it as "intentionally gender accurate and not gender neutral."
___"Much of what I have read about the TNIV is often unfair, unwarranted and simply untrue," Strauss said. "Gender-accurate translations like the TNIV seek to accurately convey the sense of the Hebrew or Greek original while utilizing the language people use today. That is the best possible goal for Bible translation."
___Such a goal was what the translators of the King James Version had in mind when they wrote the preface to their 1611 edition, Strauss said.
___"Keeping the Bible current was critically important to the King James Version translators. It was critically important to William Tyndale, whose magnificent translation captured the hearts of the English people in their own words, and it is critically important to the TNIV translators."
___Grudem charged that changes in gender language made by TNIV translators demonstrate a systematic agenda, with the goal of "muting the masculinity of Christ" and attributing traditional male roles in Scripture to women.
___For example, he cited the TNIV's translation of 1 Timothy 3:11--"In the same way, women who are deacons are to be worthy of respect."
___Grudem called the translation "a debatable question exegetically, and doubtful." But by its translation, the TNIV makes women deacons "required," he added. "These are big changes revealing a systematic agenda."
___TNIV translators have succumbed to a feminist agenda, Grudem asserted.
___Strauss, however, countered that the application of "gender-accurate" phrasing was neither politically motivated nor representative of any agenda. "The TNIV is not trying to make God into a woman," he said. The translation, Strauss said, only attempts to bring the sense of Scripture into the modern vernacular.
___"Why are we fighting about this?" Strauss asked. "Let's not let an issue like this divide and break up the body of Christ."
___Grudem answered that he, too, wants to promote the full equality of males and females in the sight of God, but applying "gender-neutral language" to English translations of biblical Greek and Hebrew risks changing the words of God.

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