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Reading NIV NIrV and
NASB
At the risk of
being unfair by oversimplifing, the NIV and NIrV are "translations", the NASB is
a "transliteration."
The NIV and NIrV try to, in
English, convey the same meaning as the original texts even if that means that
the exact wording is lost in English..
The NIV is written in something
like Grade 9 English, the NIrV is written in something like Grade 4 English. The
NIrV chooses to use "smaller" words to make it more understandable. Sometimes
this changes the meaning a little further away from the original Hebrew or
Greek, but it doesn't seem to go too far from the original.
The NASB much more often trys to
give a word for word translation even if that means that the "meaning" is lost
in English. It compromises on this goal, but it is better than nothing. The
"Updated NASB" compromises slightly further for readability (see notes that come
with the Translation)
For example. If in the Hebrew, it
is clear by the word endings that "he" refers to a specific person but in
English it is ambigous, the NIrV and to a lesser degree, the NIV will, rather
than saying the pronoun HE will use the actual person's name again. Similarily,
if the text refers to "Simon" and it is absoultely clear that it is referring to
"Peter", the NIV will use "Peter" rather than sometimes using "Simon" and
sometimes using "Peter."
Personally, I feel that having
both the NIV (or NIrV) and the NASB or Updated NASB together give the best
combination for study. An even better alternative, if one can read Greek or
Hebrew, is to combine the NIV and Greek or Hebrew instead of the NASB.
Personally I don't know Hebrew so I use NIV/NASB for OT and NIV/Greek/NASB for
the NT.
Obviously in Grade 4, it is highly
unlikely that any can read Geek and it is still fairly unlikely that we have any
who can read Hebrew - (any Children have Jewish parents?)
We will refer to the Hebrew where
appropriate, but will primarily use the NIV(or NIrV) and NASB in
class.
Version secifics:
specifics:
"YHWH" (often pronounced
incorrecty Yaw-Way):
NIV/NIrV: "LORD "
NASB: " LORD" (Almost the same as NIV except all 4 capitals
are the same size in NASB, the NIV/NIrV uses "small capitals" for the
ORD)
"Adonai" is written "Lord" by all
3.
"Adonai YHWH"
NIV/NIrV "Sovereign
Lord"
NASB "Lord God"
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