NIV Part 3: When Bible Words Disappear

The words on the page shape the God you picture, the gospel you preach, and the courage you bring to temptation. That’s why we take a hard look at the New International Version (NIV) and ask a simple question with enormous consequences: are we reading a translation that preserves God’s words, or a rewrite that smooths them into something else?

We start in the Old Testament with concrete, checkable examples. We talk about Hebrew terms often rendered “I pray thee” and “behold,” and why dropping them is not just trimming clutter but changing tone, urgency, and emphasis. We also dig into the hidden influence of paragraph and section headings, because captions can turn interpretation into “Scripture” before you even read the verse. And we address transparency in Bible translation, contrasting marked supplied words in the KJV with the NIV’s approach, which can leave readers unaware of what has been added to make English flow.

Then we move to doctrine. We discuss Sheol and why translating it as “grave” or “depths” instead of “hell” can blur judgment and eternity. From there we step into New Testament textual criticism, outlining the shift from the traditional Byzantine text used broadly in the Reformation era to a modern critical text associated with the United Bible Societies (UBS). Finally, we walk through key passages we believe are weakened, including well-known examples touching the deity of Jesus Christ.

If you care about Bible accuracy, manuscript evidence, and how translation philosophy shapes theology, listen now, share it with a friend, and subscribe so you don’t miss the rest of the series. After you listen, what verse do you want to compare next?

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Transcript

Why Bible Controversies Matter

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And a very, very pleasant good day to each and every one of you. I'm Brother James, and I greet you once again in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world. And I welcome you to the Preaching of the Cross Radio Broadcast. This is a ministry of the Bible Baptist Church of Deland, Florida, by God's grace being heard now in many parts of the world. And we're so happy, we're so happy and thankful to God for placing a desire in your heart to listen to this broadcast today, and we believe that God will use it in your life if you will just allow Him to do so. So many of the things that we talk about on this broadcast are controversial, not because we try to be controversial, not because we're trying to stir up some controversy or start some sort of a battle. These battles were here before I got saved. These controversies existed before I was ever born again. And when I became a new creature in Christ Jesus, and was placed in the body of Christ and joined to the Lord Jesus Christ, I became bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, Ephesians chapter two, Ephesians chapter five, and his battles became my battles, and his warfare became my warfare, and his position became my position. And so those who oppose the Lord Jesus Christ and those who oppose his word are not my opponents because I like to fight and quarrel. They are my opponents because they pick the fight with my Redeemer and my Savior and His Blessed Holy Word. I don't like to quarrel, I don't like to fight, I'll go out of my way, I'll go all the way around the block to avoid a controversy. But this this satanic attack upon the Holy Bible is one that we cannot avoid. It's one that we cannot allow to go unchecked and unanswered. And there is there is no way that you can read your Bible in Genesis chapter three and not understand the method of the serpent's working. It's to attack God's word. Now we've been discussing on this broadcast the last two programs. We've been giving you an analysis of the actual text of the New International Version of the Scriptures. And we have shown you, by the help of God, we have shown you the philosophy of their translation, that they did not believe they were handling the Word of God, nor that they produced the Word of God. We have shown you textual problems in the NIV throughout

The NIV Translation Philosophy Critiqued

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the Old Testament, and we're going to continue to do that on the program today and then get into some of the textual problems in the New Testament. We're going to start, first of all, talking about omissions and additions. You know, God said if you take anything out of his word, he would take your name out of his book of life, and if you added anything to his word, then he would add to you all the plagues that were written in the book. So I wouldn't dare treat the Bible like the translators of the NIV have treated the Bible. There's an unusual Hebrew participle found throughout the Old Testament. It's the word na NA. It is classified by most Hebrew scholars as a particle of entreaty or exhortation. It is commonly translated I pray thee. This little word carries with it much more than just a simple request. Its implications are more in the way of earnest entreaty, as Moses request of God, I beseech thee, show me thy glory, Exodus thirty-three, eighteen. Or it denotes urging as when Abraham urged his wife to deny their marriage in Genesis twelve thirteen. Now the New International Version, as we stated in an earlier broadcast, by their own words has quote, striven for a more than word for word translation in an attempt to catch the thought of the biblical writers. In other words, they rewrote the Bible, and they missed the significance of this Hebrew participle. The NIV has Abraham or Abram telling Sarai, Say you are my sister, which is more a command than a request, and in Exodus thirty three eighteen, Moses merely says, Now show me your glory, commanding God. The man of Gibeah who sought to protect his house guest from his kinsmen in the NIV merely says, No, my friends, don't be so vile. While the Holy Bible of the King James Version says, Nay, my brethren, nay I pray you do not so wickedly. It's quite a difference. Another Hebrew word that is often ignored is Hina H I N E H usually translated behold. Some scholars claim that this word serves no significant function in the Hebrew language, and that's merely an interjection rather than a meaningful part of speech. The NIV translators make no comment on the word, instead they simply omit it. Yeah, they it's just gone. Genesis one twenty nine, Genesis twelve eleven, uh anywhere you want to look. Again, the major issue in the omission of this and other words is not so much laxity of translation. It is rather a matter of inerrancy. If the Bible is truly God's words, his admonitions against changing that word must be heeded. Each word must be considered important because God considers it important. Otherwise God would have omitted it. There are some words that the NIV includes that would better have been omitted. Paragraph and section headings. It's true, of course, that these can can and do serve useful purpose in helping the reader determine breaks and changes of subject. This is especially true in the prophets, in which many concepts or ideas are foreign to the average English reader. But a major problem with headings is the interpretive nature of the headings in many Bibles. As the footnote to the first heading of the NIV's Song of Solomon says, and I quote, in some instances the divisions and their captions are debatable. Now presenting as fact debatable ideas may have its place in interpretive commentaries, but their insertion into the so-called scriptures only increases the likelihood of misinterpretation of God's word. Of course, there are places in both Old and New Testaments in which words must be inserted to give sense to English translation, we've talked about that elsewhere, as there would be in translating in any written work from one language to another. The Hebrew and Greek languages often omit words, particularly forms of the verb to be. A fully literal translation of Genesis 1 4 would be, and God saw the light that good. For Hebrew readers this makes perfect sense, but for English readers a verbal form needs to be inserted, rendering the phrase that it was good. However, in Scripture, again, because of admonitions to keep God's word pure, these additions need to be noted. This the King James Bible does by italicizing the necessarily added words. But the NIV doesn't do this. The theory of translation employed in the NIV is that it is the thoughts behind the words, and not the words themselves that are important, thus there are in essence no added nor subtracted words possible in their translation. Because they're not translating words, they're translating the message or the meaning. Every word in the translation would have been meant by the author, regardless of what he wrote, that's their thinking. The author of Genesis would have meant that it was good. Thus, according to the NIB translators, the translation is accurate, and there are no added words, even though they've added thousands of words. Now, as we've already discussed, a man's thoughts can only be known by his words, if then.

Missing Hebrew Nuance And Key Words

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Then there's some unacceptable words. The daily newspaper is full of accounts of the sins of men, and often people, even Christians, will read lengthy articles looking for a few more details of what happened. This is understandable with the unsaved man, his natural tendency is to progress further into sin, and the more decadent the better. The Christian, however, is admonished to be transformed by the renewing of his mind, a transformation accomplished by the Holy Spirit through the Word of God. The original author sought to aid in this. Rather than detailing the sins of men, they spoke of men's sins euphemistically. In Judges nineteen, the old man of Gibeah who invited the Levite into the protection of his home was ordered by the wicked of the city to bring forth the man that we may know him. When the Levite's concubine, a term in itself that could, and today usually is put in more explicit words, was instead put out of the house, she was abused, verse twenty five, until she died. Ezekiel twenty three twenty is more specific, but the Hebrew language still speaks of the flesh of asses and the issue, literally scattering seed, whether in begetting children or planting crops of horses, rather than using more vivid terminology. Most translators follow the original authors by either translating literally or using euphemisms which express the idea of what happened without putting impure thoughts or pictures in the minds of readers, and without contributing to man's tendency toward sin. But the NIV uses detailed language, language so inappropriate that we're not even going to repeat it. It's certainly out of place in a book whose author is supposed to be God and desires the transforming of the mind to his standards. It's doubtful that the descriptive language used in the NIV, particularly that in Ezekiel 23, would be used even in a daily newspaper in our wicked modern society. It could certainly not be read to a child. It would only cause the mind of an unbeliever to stray away from the message of the scriptures. Modernizing the Bible is one thing, but vulgarizing the Bible is something entirely different. And that's what the NIV has done. Inserting language into their text which is not the language of the Hebrew manuscripts which they're translating, and language which we won't even repeat. Now the NIV in its determination to do away with words that might not be easily understood by modern readers, has changed one final word we want to talk about from the generally accepted translations of that word to one that fits well the modern thought. For centuries, Sheol has meant either the physical grave or hell as the abode of the dead. The NIV clings to that first meaning, but never translates Sheol as hell. The wicked shall be turned into hell, Psalm 917, in the NIV reads The wicked return to the grave. Not only is that a perverted doctrine, they don't return to the grave, they never came out of the grave. But it's it's the heresy of the Jehovah's Witnesses all over again. God's omnipresence comes into doubt. Psalm 139, verse 8 reads, If I make my bed in hell, behold thou art there. But the NIV says, If I make my bed in the depths, his omniscience is limited to his perfection, as high as heaven and deeper than hell, and Job 11, 7 and 8 becomes the depths of the grave. I'm sure that if you talk to your next Jehovah's Witness buddy, and quote to him these verses from the NIV, he'll get a big smile on his face and say, Well, how about that? At last, a Bible making its way into fundamental and evangelical churches that teaches just exactly what the hellbound heretics of the Watchtower Society have been teaching for years. No hell. Probably the worst effect of limiting Sheol to the grave is the heresy the idea supports. Now you know in recent years, not only liberals but also conservatives have accepted the belief that hell does not exist, that death is the grave in which the soul is not conscious of pleasure or pain but merely sleeps, and then either eternal reward or annihilation. The belief has become so prevalent and so inviting every Christian knows at least one person who has gone to a Christless grave, that according to uh Gershner, when uh he wrote in his uh Repenter Parish, published in 1990, he said even John Stott was led astray. The NIV does nothing to direct its readers, saved and unsaved, to a correct understanding of eternity for the lost. In the NIV, even Lucifer, Son of the Mourning, has been denied punishment. Isaiah 14, verse 15 in the Holy Bible pronounces Lucifer's doom that he shall be brought down to hell. But as he directed the translators of the NIV, they decided to give their buddy the devil a break and rendered Isaiah 14, 15 brought down to the grave. To be

Headings Italics And Added Words

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with the wicked in Capernaum, Matthew 11, 23, changed to the depths. Now, this this remarkable work of perverting the truth wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that tens of thousands of fundamental and evangelical Christians are now using an NIV and believing that they actually have a copy of the Word of God. That's the sad part. And that's just a brief overview of the Old Testament. Now let's look at some of the translation's difficulties with the New Testament of the NIV. Now before we begin this section of our study, a word of explanation is in order to give a basis for this look at the NIV New Testament. Until the mid-1800s, the accepted Greek New Testament was based upon some form of what is called the traditional text. This text was comprised of readings from over 5,000 manuscripts, which were found all over the Mediterranean world and dated from the fifth to seventeenth centuries AD. This text, classified in later years as the Byzantine type text, is the basis for the received text from which the authorized King James Version and translations into a number of other languages were made. It was the New Testament of the Reformation and early Protestant church throughout the world. In the mid-1800s, however, the traditional Greek text of the New Testament was abandoned, and a new text was constructed. In this, the textual critics essentially abandoned the traditional Byzantine text for a handful, and I mean just a handful of manuscripts found in Egypt. In Egypt, which dated from the third to the fifteenth century. Two of these Alexandrian manuscripts, dating from the fourth century, were considered by some scholars as being the best representatives of the original manuscripts, which they'd never seen, on the basis of their relative age and several other subjective factors. There would be no problem in textual criticism if the Alexandrian manuscripts, particularly these two oldest, had not differed so greatly from the traditional text. However, one of these Alexandrian manuscripts, which is known as get this, the Vatican manuscript, differs from the traditional text in 7,578 words. And the Sinai manuscript differs in 8,972 places. Worse, the Vatican and Sinai manuscripts disagree between themselves more than 3,000 times in the Gospels alone. As the 19th century genius John Burgeon put it, it is in fact easier to find two consecutive verses in which these manuscripts differ one from another than two consecutive verses in which they entirely agree. And yet 20th century scholars have chosen, on the basis of their own flawed reasoning, to abandon the traditional text in favor

Vulgar Language And Modernizing Gone Wrong

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of a text based on these two Alexandrian manuscripts. The newest edition of this text is the United Bible Society's third edition. Although the NIV translators were free to consider and incorporate readings from other Greek texts, thus rendering the basis of the NIV an eclectic text, it appears that they followed the United Bible Society's third edition for their New Testament work almost entirely. Now the Greek text of the NIV provides the best that modern scholarship has to offer. A scholarship that places the five thousand five hundred manuscripts of the traditional text to the side and translates from two perverted manuscripts and calls that the best available material. Thus the traditional text of the New Testament has virtually no place in the NIV. Instead, the NIV reproduces many of the doctrinal errors and problems inherent in the United Bible Society's text. A few examples we're going to give you, although many more can be cited. Matthew 544, King James Bible, but I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you. What does the NIV say? But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. You say, Where's the rest of it? Or they just left it out. Just took it right out of God's word, just like Eve did. Now, supporters of the NIV argue that the NIV says essentially the same thing as the authorized version, but with just fewer words. But the NIV reading, particularly in our culture, would free Christians from actions and words that display the love of God. A love not of feelings, but of activities toward the undeserving. A love that draws even enemies to the Savior. Another well-known problem in the NIV that finds its origin in the United Bible Society's perverted Greek text is 1 Timothy 3 16. Here the Holy Bible tells us that without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness, God was manifest in the flesh. What a clear cut application. Absolute statement on the deity of Jesus Christ. What does the NIV say? Are you ready? He appeared in a body. Who did? Karl Marx? Who did? Raucho Marx? Who did? Mother Teresa? They all appeared in a body. What does that prove? No, my friends, the Holy Bible says God was manifest in the flesh. That's something worth talking about. In the NIV, this phrase is useless. He appeared in a body. Of course Jesus appeared in a body. He was a man, but was he God? Well, not according to the NIV. Here he's just another person in a body. The NIV supporters argue that there are plenty of other verses in the scriptures that deal with Christ's deity, but there are none that affirm his Godhood as clearly and boldly as this does. And it should be noted too that it is not just the traditional majority that include God in this verse, several copies of the Alexandrian manuscripts, a majority of lectionaries, scripture portions used for worship services in the early church, and such church fathers as Gregory of Nyssa, Chrysostom, Dynimas, Theodoret, and Euthanelus, some of whom predate the two major Alexandrian manuscripts also include God. But the NIV just decided to leave God out. You say why? You should know by now. The NIV, again, on the basis of the Alexandrian

Sheol Rendered As Grave Not Hell

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texts, weakens another passage which teaches the deity of Christ. In the authorized King James Holy Bible, Romans 14, 10 and 12 reads, For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ, so then every one of us shall give account of himself to God. The NIV changes this to, for we will all stand before God's judgment seat, so then each of us will give an account of himself to God. Now you see, in the traditional text, all men are to stand before Christ, giving account to God. Thus Christ is clearly called God. The NIV changes Christ in verse 10 to God. Thus verse 12 becomes merely a restatement of verse 10 without the affirmation that the person of the Godhead who is at the right of judgment, who has the right of judgment, is Christ. To compound the matter, the NIV gives no footnote to indicate the change. Thus, someone referring to these verses in the King James Bible would find an NIV reader totally uncomprehending. Here a wonderful verse which plainly declares our Savior's deity is done away with without the average Christian even knowing it. The deity of Christ is attested in this passage in some Alexandrian manuscripts, the majority of other manuscripts, many ancient versions, and at least ten church fathers. Of all the manuscripts existing in the world today, nearly six thousand of them, it is missing only from seven. Unfortunately for the church, it includes the two considered the best by the NIV translators, the Vatican manuscript, and a copy of the Sinai Manuscript, in which this verse had been rewritten by someone's hand. You say, why in the world would the NIV attack the deity of Jesus Christ on that basis? Don't you know by now? Who was it that first said yea, hath God said? It wasn't the Holy Spirit. I'll grant you that. Alright, that wraps up part three of a five-part study on the NIV. Some of you are thinking, I didn't know. That translation had all those problems. Others of you are thinking, I knew it did, but I didn't really know how to put it all together. Others of you are saying, I don't know that that's right. I wish I could have those references and check them out. Whatever the case might be, all five of these studies are on one CD available to you when you visit our website, Jameswnox.org. When you visit the website, look for the study on the NIV. It's all on one CD. You and your friends need this study. That's JamesW Nox.org. The announcer will be on now in just a moment to let you know when this program will be heard again over this radio station. And we hope that at that time you and a friend that you invite to listen with you will join us for the preaching of the cross radio broadcast. Until then, I'm Brother James. May the Lord richly bless you, and good day.