Why Is The NIV Exclusively Used In Commentaries?
I am at the point of great weariness concerning how many commentaries rely on the NIV as the text of study. The reason I have grown weary is because these commentaries must repeatedly point out the shortcomings of the NIV because the NIV is not as accurate as it should be. Today I am studying 1 Thessalonians and have been doing research from the Pillar New Testament Commentary. This has been a very good commentary so far. But it seems like nearly every page has to be a clarification on what the sentence really means because the NIV did not capture the idea correctly. Gene L. Green often refers to the NRSV for a more accurate rendering of the text.
Which leads me to wonder why so many commentaries feel compelled to rely upon the NIV text! Where are the commentaries that use the NRSV? The New Interpreter’s Bible commentary is the only commentary series I can think of that uses the NRSV, but it also includes the NIV. Where are the commentaries that are based on the NASB? Where are the commentaries built upon any translation other than the NIV? I understand why there are not commentaries based upon the newer translations (ESV, HCSB, TNIV, etc). But most commentaries use the NIV and then must waste time explaining how the NIV misses the mark, frequently pointing out that another translation is better.
I have been rewarded by collecting the New International Commentary on the New Testament (NICNT) BEFORE the recent revision to the NIV. You may have seen them with the yellow covers and a handier size than the current NICNT series. These are based on the ASV, which is a nice change of pace. You can find these used on Amazon for less than $5 a volume, which is a great deal for any Bible student.
Maybe we can rally students of the Bible to cry out to publishers to build their commentaries either on the author’s translation (I really like how the Baker Exegetical Commentary series did this) or from a translation other than the NIV. I think the market is quite flooded with NIV commentaries that are filled with pages about how the NIV comes up short.
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Your Thoughts
5 Comments so far5 Responses to “Why Is The NIV Exclusively Used In Commentaries?”
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ElShaddai Edwards
May 28, 2009 at 6:36 pm
If you want something really arcane, here’s a link to a commentary series that uses the Revised English Bible (REB) translation:
http://tinyurl.com/kkws3d
Brent Kercheville
May 28, 2009 at 8:37 pm
Thanks, El Shaddai. I have never seen those before. Do you have any of them? Are they any good?
ElShaddai Edwards
May 29, 2009 at 6:13 am
No, unfortunately, I don’t have any of them. Other than William Barclay’s series, I’ve never really been a commentary collector – I just don’t have the time or space to devote to that. These were brought to my attention by a fellow REB “fan”.
Brian
May 29, 2009 at 7:26 pm
I think the WBC guys go off the author’s own translation and then in the text of the commentary you have the prhase, or sentence in the original language followed by comments.Â
Robert Jimenez
June 3, 2009 at 1:46 pm
Brent,
I just started reading “Listening to the Spirit in the Text” by Gordon Fee. Ironically he stated why he decided to go with the NIV in his NICNT commentary (1 Cor.) that he wrote.Â
This is his reasoning:
“My choices boiled down to the RSV, NASB, and the NIV. In some ways the sheer woodenness of the NASB would have made an excellent basis for comment, but I finally settled on the NIV mostly because I thought it to be the most common translation among those who constitute the greater market for the series – but also partly because of some dissatisfaction with the RSV on 1 Cor. 7:25 and the NASB on 1 Cor. 7:36-38 (plus the fact the Professor Bruce had written his New Century commentary on the RSV). As I began to work my way through the text I also came to be a bit disillusioned with the NIV and finally secured permission from Zondervan Publishers to alter its text in several places where I found it exegetically impossible or, in many cases, where it employed unnesccessarily sexist language.”