Are the NIV and ESV REALLY Altering Scripture?

(First off, let me please start by saying this. It's been a long time since I've put out one of my Pastor's Blogs, and I apologize for that. There's just so much going on in the world right now, it feels like nothing I deal with is of primary importance. And, quite frankly, it's been an excessively busy last few months. So, combine it all, between being almost incapable of finding the time to blog, and not being terribly certain of what I should write about, I've let it go for far too long. And for that, once again, I apologize.)

There's been a meme that has been getting shared for the last couple of weeks throughout the American evangelical world, and it's just...so wrong. I've commented on it whenever I have seen it pop up, but it has become so pervasive that I feel I must expand, because it ultimately goes to the trustworthiness of your Bible - and thus to the very foundations on which we place our faith. It's not a new meme - I've seen this a number of times over the last number of years - but for some reason it has taken off in a viral storm as of late.

Here's a set of screenshots of the viral meme in question:

***Before I reiterate my response that I've been giving to this viral meme in multiple comments sections, I want to deal with what I believe is a side claim here: the deal with HarperCollins. It is in fact true that HarperCollins has owned Zondervan for almost 40 years now, and HarperCollins, being a giant in the publishing world, does publish many things that Christians should be appalled by. But here's why I believe this is, as I said, a side claim in all of this:

1. I don't know anything about the motivations of HarperCollins, but I know Zondervan, a company with a solid reputation of stand-up Christian publishing. It feels unlikely that the parent company would want to intentionally tarnish the reputation of an entity they bought, when that reputation is most likely itself the reason they would have purchased that company in the first place.

2. Ultimately, their motivations don't actually matter here, because the primary thing we're dealing with here is the content of Scripture. In other words, if the changes made were proper, then it doesn't matter if their motivations are less than honorable.

3. More than that, this whole controversy doesn't apply to the English Standard Version (ESV), which has also done the same in their most recent updates as the New International Version (NIV) has, but, unlike the NIV, isn't owned and distributed by Zondervan.

THE REAL ISSUE AT HAND

Are the changes made in these passages appropriate and proper? Here is how I have responded multiple times as I've seen this meme come across my way these last few weeks:

"This isn’t a conspiracy. To help you understand, you should read your New American Standard Bible (NASB), as it provides the proper context. Because every single passage you listed here is included in the NASB, but in brackets. Why brackets? Because, as the notes in your NASB explain, these passages simply cannot be found in any of the earliest known manuscripts.

"The reality is, while the King James Version (KJV) was a marvel when it was done, in large part because its translators did use Greek and Hebrew manuscripts, it was clear that they weren’t also trying to kick dirt on the Vulgate (the official Latin translation), even though it did not have the manuscript evidence in the overwhelming amounts that we have today. So if there were portions included in the Vulgate, they were included in the KJV, even if manuscript evidence was found wanting. And for the last 400 years or so, we’ve continued doing that. While pretty much everyone knew that these lines were almost certainly not in the original God-inspired writings, they were included, often in the brackets we see today in the NASB, or with subtext notations explaining how they likely were not a part of the original text, because everyday people “knew” them as being part of Scripture.

"We don’t know why or how the younger/later manuscripts have the added lines (there’s speculation, like in Matthew 17:21, which basically is a copy of what was said in Mark 9:29, where many people think that manuscript writers might’ve gotten the two passages confused or there was an assumption that, since we knew Jesus said it as part of this same story as recorded in Mark, that Matthew was supposed to have it - but that’s just speculation). It just seems to be clear that, for whatever reason, many manuscript copiers did just that - they added lines.

That’s why the newest editions of the NIV and ESV left them out. Because the editors/translators of those versions finally came to the conclusion of “Why should we include in our translations lines that pretty much everyone agrees were not in the original writings of these books simply because they were almost certainly wrongfully included in the Vulgate?” And I have to admit, they have a point."

Long story short, by applying textual criticism to an understanding of multiple passages, the editors/translators/compilers of these translations have determined that the most proper way to handle these passages is to no longer simply denote that they were not likely in any of the earliest manuscripts (most of which didn't show up in any manuscripts for about 400+ years after the original writings), and to instead simply leave these passages out, since they are almost certainly not a part of the original God-inspired text. Ultimately, I would land on saying the changes that were made in the most recent editions of the NIV and ESV in regards to dropping these lines/phrases/verses from their translations were in fact appropriate and proper.

UNDERSTANDING TEXTUAL CRITICISM

Here's where I want to expand a bit, because "textual criticism" sounds like a technical term - and to some extent it is. But there are many who'll hear that term and think that it is a secular application of Scripture, a purely educational take on it. And that couldn't be further from the truth.

Textual criticism is looking at the original Greek and Hebrew, doing your best to understand what it means, and then showcasing it properly in Scripture. It is an academic process, but it is also an utterly essential process. In our world right now, we are struggling with many "evangelical" pastors who do not properly use a process that we call exegesis, where you pull out of Scripture what the intended meaning was. Instead, many resort to what is known as eisegesis, where the pastor puts into the passage what he personally thinks it should mean or what he wants it to mean. A serious Biblical preacher/teacher never wants to be accused of eisegesis. But the only way to have proper exegesis is to have proper textual criticism as the foundation.

We're not all textual criticism experts, or Greek and/or Hebrew scholars. Even most pastors would fall very short in these regards. But we can all be on our guard. Because we can't allow ourselves or the Church at large to be swayed, not when it comes to the accuracy and proper understanding of the Bible, which is the basis and foundation upon which we can know our Savior and His Gospel.

WHAT IT ULTIMATELY MEANS

Please understand that, while I am here defending the NIV and ESV as they attempt to get the most accurate version of Scripture into our hands, this is in no way a criticism of people who like using the KJV to read and study Scripture. Like all translations, since it is a translation from one language to another, it's never going to be spot-on perfect. Which is why when a head of state gives a speech in a foreign country, and a translator is there to make it understood in that foreign country, no one claims that the translator gave the speech. In other words, as long as you're not using the KJV in a KJV-only near-cult-like manner (as I suspect the original author of this meme and post might have been trying to do, but as I know most of my KJV-primarily-using friends are absolutely not), it's great to use, it's a solid translation to read and study with (as long as you understand that some of the meanings of the words it uses have changed over the last 400 years). Just keep in mind that there is a reason why other translations have been translated the way they have, too.

As such, it's helpful to know that, just like different human translators might translate what someone is saying differently from each other based on the emphasis they put on their translating, different Bible translators do the same. If the word "standard" is in the name, for instance (NASB, RSV, ESV, HCSB, etc.), they are usually trying their best to give a word-for-word translation. While others, like the NIV or NLT are more attempting a thought-for-thought (or phrase-for-phrase) translation, since the way that sentences were structured in Greek and Hebrew are often very different from English. For its part, the KJV has often been noted for being a little in the middle of those two styles.

But what it also means is that we do have to be careful, because there are indeed some "translations" that don't pass the textual criticism test. Christians who want to truly study the Bible accurately ought to avoid these like the plague, among which are:

• The Passion Translation (TPT) - it is not a real translation, it is simply one man's interpretation. Like The Message and The Living Bible before it, it is a paraphrase. Unlike those two, which claim to be paraphrases, TPT begins as a deception from the start by claiming to be an actual translation, and it mishandles the plain understanding of the Greek and Hebrew on multiple occasions

• New World Translation (NWT) - it is a slick translation, in that it was developed by Jehovah's Witnesses to make the Bible agree with their theology. The most insidious part of the NWT is that it was clearly developed by people who knew the Greek well enough to figure out ways to defend it, while making it clear that, if they knew it that well, they knew they were mishandling it out of pure deception (their mangling of John 1:1, for instance, could be its own blog post)

• New Century Version (NCV) - a very popular translation released around the turn of the century, the slickness of the NCV was much more hidden early on. Commissioned by the International Church of Christ, it subtly altered passages to fit the more heavily legalistic, works-based teachings of the church

There are others like these, too, and unfortunately, there will likely be more. In other words, I'm not angry at people asking the question of IF the NIV and ESV should've removed the lines/phrases/verses in question. It's okay, honorable even, to be mindful, careful, vigilant about what's in your Bible...as long as you do the work so that you don't get duped in the process.

THE MOST IMPORTANT THING

Love the Word of God enough to want to know it in its actual purpose. Be humble enough to understand that what you "know" might not be all that there is to know. Study multiple translations, see where they are the same, see where they might be different, and dig to understand why. And be ready, because memes/posts like this viral one, which may seem to be well-intentioned, might just be missing the mark in pretty significant ways. It is on the Church - and that includes every one of you who are reading this and are saved by the grace of Christ - to make sure the world doesn't get confused about the truth of Scripture.

The B-I-B-L-E

Yes, that's the book for me

I stand Alone on the Word of God

The B-I-B-L-E