on the new NIV Bible

I've been talking a lot lately about words, translations and history.  This topic falls squarely within that realm.  The new NIV Bible is coming out soon. It has taken over 25 years to create this version.  The publishers feel they have made good decisions about controversial passages and possible past mistranslations.  They have looked at each name and its root to see if it was really translated into the correct gender, and found in many cases "he" had been chosen in earlier volumes where the word should have been more neutral, such as "they".

I read an editorial blog, which was really nothing more than a press release for the NIV publishers, but what really interested me was the comments section.  Many people are very upset about this new translation.  They feel this is the work of the devil to "obfuscate" or misdirect people from the true word of God.  Many of these upset people used biblical verses to illuminate their point; and here's where I became amused.  The quotes were in English, many from the King James version, but not all.  I wonder how many of them realized the original form of these quotes had been in Greek, Hebrew, and ancient Hebrew or Aramaic.  Jesus did not speak English.  These people's very cases were ironically lampooned by the very language they chose to reply with.

There are little tracts, about 3" x 1.5", in flip-book form, printed in black and white by Chick Publications.  You can find them in many places.  A local Hispanic church was handing one of them out a couple of years ago at their free public fair.  The tract they handed out was fairly innocuous, it simply showed how Jesus was crucified and how he died for our sins; typical Christian fare.  However, the Chick Co. prints a whole menu of these little tracts and not all of them are so innocent.  A good number of them depict grotesque caricatures of  Middle Easterners who live depraved lives as Muslims and finally see the light and become Christian.  They depict hooked nosed Jews who are greedy and vile.  They show nineteen-thirties style African Americans speaking in Amos & Andy style dialects.  Name a derogatory stereotype, any xenophobic, homophobic, other-religion-phobic caricature and Chick has printed it.  They have cleaned up their website, and you have to dig pretty deep to find their "off the beaten path" comics and tracts, but they do print them, by the thousands. But they don't stop there.

Jack Chick helped found a particular religious movement.  It is called the "King James Only Movement".

First, some history:  Back when King Henry VIII (Henry Tudor) wanted a divorce, so he asked the Pope for the appropriate separation.  The Pope refused.  Angered, King Henry set up the official Church of England, called the Anglicans (Episcopols) and got his divorce.  The entire kingdom was Catholic at this time and now suddenly they had a new church that was being supported financially by the government.  The people rebelled and this is where we get the longest word: antidisestablishmentarianism for those people who didn't like the government pulling funding from the Catholic church.

Anyway, years later Queen Elizabeth took the throne.  Her cousin Mary Queen of Scots thought she'd inherit the country, but Elizabeth had her arrested for treason. Mary's son was James VI.  James eventually sided with Elizabeth, his mother was beheaded and James became Elizabeth's close ally.  The country was still divided, but was mostly Protestant now and Catholics were being caught and burned for their "heresy" and "sedition".  James eventually became King, called King James I.  The Catholic church had the Latin Bible, but the Protestants had a concoction of mismatched passages, so in order to better unite the English people James commissioned a Bible written in "plain English" of the time.  Of course the language spoken in that time is very different from the one we use today.

Jack Chick's group believes that King James I was divinely inspired and that God himself directed the translation from the Latin Vulgate Bible of the Catholics, along with some original first Century Greek manuscripts into the English version we still have today.  Therefore, any other translation is heresy and the work of the devil.  Therefore any religious body, any person, congregation, pastor, priest, etc. that doesn't use the King James version is not a real Christian because they have not actually heard the legitimate word of God.

Funny how worked-up people get over language, huh?