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(Dr. Bruce Waltke) Jesus said, “I’ll reward you a hundredfold,” and he has. When I look at the fruit of it, and I see the people, it’s just a wonderful thing.
(Dr. Karen Jobes) I don’t know exactly commercially how the spread of the NIV happened, but I know that the committee was always from the beginning interested in having a translation that would be useful in various English-speaking parts of the world.
(Dr. Mark Strauss) Well, it is the New International Version, and from the very beginning, that’s been a really important part of the translation.
(Dr. Karen Jobes) So, wherever English was spoken, the goal was to produce a translation that would be meaningful and useful in that culture.
(Dr. Paul Swarup) For me, having NIV was the Bible that I grew up on, and NIV has been there in India, as I said, from the eighties and has been a very popular translation. The NIV Study Bible really impacted a lot of us at that time. It was one of the best study Bibles ever produced.
(Dr. Douglas Moo) We translators of the NIV, I think, never lose sight of the fact that the decisions we are making are going to be put in the Bible, published in print and electronic versions all over the world.
(Dr. Paul Swarup) Christianity now is really growing in the majority world. Most Christians are in the global south.
(Dr. David Instone-Brewer) Now, of course, we have the NIRV which cuts downs the sentences into smaller units, and so it also communicates to people who have English as a second language.
(Dr. Douglas Moo) More people are now speaking English as a second language than speak it as a native language.
(Dr. Paul Swarup) At this point, I am in the Cathedral Church of the Redemption. I’m the presbyter in charge there of the senior pastor. We have actually had 2011 NIVs as our pew Bibles, so that’s what we are using for our church.
(Dr. Douglas Moo) We on CBT were very grateful that we’re able to just do our work in updating the New International Version of the Bible, the bestselling English version in the world. We love having a stake in doing that and contributing to the mission of the church in that way. We’re very grateful for that.
“Wherever English Is Spoken, the NIV Is Meaningful and Useful.”
Millions of pastors, students, and laypeople echo these words of Dr. Karen Jobes, a member of the Committee on Bible Translation (CBT) since 1996, which was the same year the NIV became the bestselling Bible in modern English. It was also the same year the New International Reader’s Version (NIrV) was published, providing younger readers and non native English speakers with an easy-toread translation that connected with them in ways no other Bible has since.
After one of the most rigorous, continuous translation processes in history, dozens of evangelical denominations, thousands of churches, and many seminaries have embraced the NIV as their offi cial Bible translation. It’s trusted. It’s accurate. It’s readable. And it’s fruitful, as a portion of the proceeds from every copy of the NIV sold helps Biblica, a global translation ministry, to translate and distribute Bibles to people in need all over the world.