I never cease to be amazed at the literary quality of the NIV. Yes, I know, I am on the committee, but I am thinking about verses that I find periodically that were written before I came on.
There is no question that "they" is becoming the pronoun of choice to refer back to either a singular or plural antecedent. Like it or not, I've seen the statistics and it is where the language is going.
As we know, Greek sentences can go on and on and on and …. Today’s English requires the sentences to be shorter, and so periodically translators put a period where there is none in Greek (so to speak), and supply a subject for the second part of the sentence.
I was looking through the LXX of Psalm 1, mulling over the NIV translation. Psalm 1:1 reads, “Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take (ἐν ὁδῷ ἁμαρτωλῶν οὐκ ἔστη) or sit in the company of mockers.”
In class the other day a student commented that the NIV had dropped out half a verse, Romans 8:2. My immediate reaction was to assume the student was correct, and I checked the textual notes to see the variants in the manuscripts. No, the Greek text was fine.
Someone just sent me the following. “I’m particularly interested in communicating Scripture in terms that the average person on the street can understand.
