Featured The NIV Is In Good Company

Yes. That is why I said the two textforms are more alike than not when such minor spelling variants are (rightfully) ignored.

Yes, that is what I said.

Yes, that is what I said.

That is a topic for a completely separate discussion.

 

No, I am not. I am the one who said it and I know what I was referring to.

When I was a seminary student almost 50 years ago there was a contentious young man who sat across from me in Old Testament Theology. Our Professor quoted from a book on OT Theology and began to explain what the author was saying. The young man spoke up and said "Dr. Van, you have misunderstood what the author was saying." To which Dr. Van replied, "Young man, I am the author!"

Rippon, "I am the author." I know exactly what I meant.

 

English does have an indefinite-gender pronoun: It. You can still see its early use as a personal pronoun in the KJV when the translators called the Holy Spirit it. Of course, the days are long past when it being applied to a person is acceptable.

While grammatically plural, they has been drafted into service as a singular to avoid use of he or he or she. This has happened within my lifetime, and no matter how much I dislike it, I know I am fighting a losing battle and that, at some point, the prescriptive grammarians will have to acknowledge its victory. Until then I will continue to keep correcting and recasting sentences to adhere to traditional grammar with the full knowledge that I'm increasingly curmudgeonly.

 

Actually that is a formal equivalent translation. "Spirit" is a neuter noun in Greek and the pronoun must, according to the rules of Greek grammar, agree in case, number, and gender, thus a neuter pronoun is required.

Me too. And grass, to me, is still something you mow, not something you smoke. And gay means lighthearted and carefree. I am not going to let anyone steal my English language.

 

Yes, but it is no longer acceptable in English to refer to a person as it. One of the many problems translators must deal with. I'm all for formal equivalency, but I also want it made perfectly clear that the Holy Spirit is a person within the trinitarian formulation, not an exudation of divinity. To call the Holy Spirit Him, not it, seems to me to be an acceptable trade-off. But not they.

 

But wait a minute. Won't Rippon demand it read "the Holy Spirit himself or herself?"

Okay, seriously, I have no problem with the KJV using "itself" as that is a correct translation of the Greek word. However, I too want the bible to reflect the fact that the Holy Spirit is a Person, so have no problem at all with changing the gender of the pronoun to masculine (which, grammatically, is inclusive).

 

Mankind is no longer inclusive. Humankind or humanity rules, at least for now.

 

For the same reasons the KJV has been revised so many times.

So should the KJV translators, but they didn't.

There weren't. One woman, who was a style consultant, not a translator nor on the translation committee, would many, many, many years later reveal that she was a lesbian. Nobody overseeing the translation of the NIV was aware of her homosexuality at the time.

[In the interest of full disclosure, my uncle, Kenneth Kantzer, served on the NIV translation committee from 1965 through 1969. However, I am not a fan of the NIV for several reasons not on point for this thread.]

 

True but language change does not explain the revisions of the KJV. That was the result of translation errors in the edition of 1611. By the way, the first revision to correct errors was published just a few months after the first edition. After the initial printing of the first edition, the second printing made a change in Ruth 3:15. In this verse, the subject of the sentence is somewhat ambiguous, so in the first edition the phrase was rendered, “he went into the citie.” Afterwards, they decided that the subject is meant to be Ruth, changing it to “she went into the citie.” Therefore, the first edition is known as the “He” Bible, and the second edition the “She” Bible.

He wasn't. He was madly in love with his wife Anne who bore him 9 children. He wrote extensively regarding proper conduct. There are absolutely no contemporary accounts alleging homosexuality on King James's part though there are contemporary accounts praising him for his moral virtue. Anthony Welden was an officer in the royal household of King James. He was knighted by King James in 1617. He was eventually dismissed from the royal court by King James. He vowed to get revenge!

He supported the anti-monarchy forces during the English Civil War. Twenty-five years after the death of King James, (one year after the execution of Charles I, King James' son) Welden made the first accusations of homosexuality against King James, after he nor his son could defend him. His statements were widely rejected at the time because there were still too many living people who had known King James personally and who dismissed the allegations as ridiculous.

King James' book Basilicon Doron (the Kingly Gift) was written in 1599. It contained instructions to his son about how to properly carry out the responsibilities of the king. Included among his instructions is this statement: "there are some horrible crimes that ye are bound in conscience never to forgive: such as witchcraft, willful murder, incest and sodomv..."

In July of 1610 James was asked to pardon a number of criminals. He did pardon several on the list but refused to pardon those convicted of sodomy. He advised his son to stay away from "effeminate ones." James repeatedly referred to homosexuality as the "horrible crime!"

King James was openly affectionate to his wife in public (public displays of affection were very rare at that time) and wrote her many love poems and sonnets. He greatly mourned her death in 1619, went into a deep depression he never recovered from, and which ultimately ended with his death in 1625. Many of his contemporaries commented that he died of a broken heart.

 

Let's see. You post a link to a book by a gay English teacher who "married" his gay partner, who reads all sorts of nonsense into the formal language used in the late 16th and early 17th century, and consider that authoritative?

 

What part of:

didn't you understand?