Dr. Strangeverse

or: How the Southern Baptists Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Inclusive Language

Every year for the past several years, the best-selling biblical translation has been the New International Version (NIV), first published in 1978 (with a minor revision in 1984). A product of Evangelical scholars, it is a fresh translation from the original languages and not a revision in the King James tradition like its competitors, the RSV or NASB. How does it compare?

Questionable Translation Choices

According to the Preface of the NIV, its translators strove for both accuracy and readability, but also “the translators were united in their commitment to the authority and infallibility of the Bible as God’s Word in written form.” This commitment has sometimes led to some questionable translation choices.

For example, Deut 1:1 in the RSV reads, “These are the words that Moses spoke to all Israel beyond the Jordan in the wilderness…” Since we know from the Bible that Moses was not allowed to cross the Jordan into the Promised Land, referring to the wilderness as “beyond the Jordan” or “across the Jordan” means the reference point of the writer was Palestine. This doesn’t pose a problem unless one is committed to the tradition that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible, which includes Deuteronomy. Translating the phrase as “in the desert east of the Jordan” eliminates the difficulty and the NIV is the only major translation that makes this choice.

How about an example from the NT? 1 Pet 4:6 in the RSV reads, “For this is why the gospel was preached even to the dead…” Is this a callback to 1 Pet 3:19 in which the risen Christ preaches to “the spirits in prison” since the time of Noah? Perhaps. But a key Evangelical belief is that salvation comes from a conversion experience and there is no possibility of that after death. The NIV removes any ambiguity in the passage by translating “the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead.” Most scholars would agree that “the dead” in this verse were alive when the gospel was preached to them and have since died, but that commentary should be placed in a footnote and not embedded into the translation.

I even referenced a dubious NIV translation in Genesis in a previous article. There are so many harmonizing and theologically-motivated translations in the NIV that at least one website is devoted to keeping track of them. The sheer number of examples leads one to suspect the motivations of the translators.

Furor Over Inclusive Language

In 2005 a new version of the NIV was released with inclusive language. Called Today’s New International Version (TNIV), it went over about as well as New Coke. Evangelicals were the target audience for the NIV and the publishers underestimated the attachment that audience had for the NIV and its willingness to accept gender-neutral language. The main complaints were places where the translators had changed 3^rd person singular pronouns to plural (“he” and “his” to “they” and “their”), “brothers” to “brothers and sisters,” “son” to “child.”

After the outcry, the translators recalibrated a bit and released a new version of the NIV in 2011, ending further publication of the 1984 NIV and the TNIV at the same time. Evangelicals were still not pleased. Reaction among the Southern Baptist Convention, for example, was to denounce the updated NIV and request that their LifeWay stores stop selling it, a request that the trustees of LifeWay decided to ignore. But it really didn’t matter because by then the Baptists already had their own translation of the Bible.

The iconic final scene from Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove (1964) as Major Kong (Slim Pickens) rides a nuclear bomb down to its intended target. Introducing inclusive language to the NIV had a similar impact.

The Baptist Bible

The Southern Baptists had been thinking about their own translation from the late 1990s. Biblica, the organization holding the copyright on the NIV, provided exclusive publishing rights to Zondervan Publishing House in exchange for covering the costs of the initial translation. Therefore, if the Southern Baptists wanted to use NIV text in their Sunday School material, they would have to pay Zondervan for licensing. Add to this economic issue the rumors of gender-inclusive language in future versions of the NIV and the Baptists sought to develop a translation that would be under their control. The result was completed in 2004 and named the Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB) after Holman Bible Publishers, the publishing arm of LifeWay Christian Resources.

One feature of the HCSB was to sometimes use “Yahweh” for the divine name YHWH where it appears in the Hebrew. So, for example, Ex 15:3 is rendered, “The Lord is a warrior; Yahweh is His name.” Use of gender-neutral language was conservative in the use of pronouns but more gender-neutral than the 1984 NIV in other places (e.g., in Rom 3:4 where the NIV reads “Let God be true, and every man a liar” the HCSB reads “God must be true, even if everyone is a liar”).

A major revision to the HCSB, simply called the Christian Standard Bible (CSB) was released at the beginning of 2017. One of the main changes – other than the name – was to revert back to the use of “the Lord” instead of “Yahweh” in the 645 instances where it had been used previously in the HCSB. Also, the CSB increased the use of gender-neutral language. While masculine pronouns were still retained, in verses like Rom 8:29 where “brothers” appeared in the HCSB, the CSB translates as “brothers and sisters” thus bringing it a step closer to the 2011 NIV that the Southern Baptists found so objectionable:

For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. (NIV2011) 

For those He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brothers. (HCSB) 

For those he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, so that he would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. (CSB)

It’s Not Liberal, It’s Biblical

This grudging acceptance of more gender-inclusive language has not gone unnoticed by the press. When The Atlantic trumpeted in an article that “Southern Baptists Embrace Gender-Inclusive Language in the Bible”, Southern Baptist scholars rose up to explain that the CSB is not really gender-neutral or gender-inclusive. It's like after years of condemning gender inclusivity as liberal and unbiblical, conservative theologians are now defending the changes as a better reflection of what the Bible actually says.

Over the past couple of articles examining the King James tradition and Catholic versions, we’ve seen how biblical translations have always been controversial. From arguments over what sources to use to arguments over whether translators are attacking Christian theology, every movement towards more accurate and inclusive translations was initially met with resistance and a demand to restore traditional language. But when we see a major conservative denomination like the Southern Baptists relax a bit on the use of gender-neutral language, perhaps the culture wars in this area may be drawing to a close.