(Dr. Douglas Moo) A lay person named Howard Long, a businessman, who a keen Christian and was anxious to tell his business associates about Christ and to lead them into this relationship he had.

(Dr. Karen Jobes) And was realizing more and more that the King James Version or the version that he was using did not communicate.

(Dr. Douglas Moo) And Howard was just really frustrated with that sort of a situation, and he said, “We need an English version of the Bible that communicates in modern English,” and ultimately over several years of meetings and kind of planning, there was born a group of scholars who decided to dedicate themselves to the thing we now call the New International Version of the Bible.

(Dr. Karen Jobes) We respect and admire and appreciate the original translation and just have had a real appreciation for the care that the committee has taken from the very beginning.
(Dr. Bruce Waltke) This was their life project. They were all very godly men. They were all committed to that God was the author.

(Dr. Douglas Moo) With the NIV, it was a translation that started with the original text of Scripture, Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and translated on the basis of those original languages.

(Dr. Karen Jobes) There is a continuity there, and there’s a heritage there and a tradition that is valuable.

(Dr. Bruce Waltke) It was rather surprising because they were very conservative and yet they had this very modern view of translation, and they insisted it had to be in the language of the people.

(Dr. Douglas Moo) Among these fifteen scholars was an attempt to represent the spectrum of the evangelical community as a whole. It would not have a denominational bias, it would not have a distinct theological bias, and not have a distinct regional bias. That was built into the DNA of the NIV from the beginning, a Bible for the broader movement.

(Dr. Bruce Waltke) A great serendipity of the NIV and this process is it got people from different traditions within the church talking to one another and respecting one another.

(Dr. Karen Jobes) And I think we all have a sense of wanting to honor the people who spent their lives on this project.

(Dr. Paul Swarup) We are standing on the shoulders of the giants who have gone before us, but we also know that we are working towards a better translation so that the next generation would benefit from that.