Zondervan has launched a digital eBook of the new NIV Bible, marking
the first time a new translation has gone digital before publication.
The digital version comes a little over a month after the publishing giant debuted the new NIV Bible online.
The updated NIV Bible, which will replace the popular 1984 NIV Bible,
will be published in March 2011 to coincide with the 400th anniversary
of the King James Version.
The new NIV eBook Bible features crisp fonts, quicker page turns, and
a navigation system that allows users to easily jump between footnotes
and text.
"With the updated NIV complete and consumers enthusiastically
awaiting its arrival, we wanted to make it available as soon as
possible," said Moe Girkins, president and CEO of Zondervan.
The company will also partner with Biblica for a Christmas promotion aimed at donating up to 30,000 Bibles to India.
During the Christmas Buy one, Give One campaign, Zondervan will
donate a New Testament of a Hindi translation based on the new NIV for
every digital eBook sold.
Keith Danby, international CEO of Biblica, said the campaign is in
step with keeping the evangelism tradition that has defined the history
of the NIV.
"There are more than 600 million people who speak Hindi, and Biblica
is launching an NIV-like Bible translation in this native language so
that God's Word could be easily understood by average Hindi-speakers,"
he said.
When Biblica first announced last year that the NIV would be revised
for the first time in 25 years, some hoped it would resolve problems
over gender-related language found in the controversial TNIV Bible.
The
company recognized that the TNIV was divisive and said it will take it
off the market with the release of the new NIV in 2011.
Many evangelicals, however, remain wary of new version for many of
the same concerns over gender-related passages in the 2003 and 2005
updates.
The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, one of the leading
critics of the TNIV, released a statement last month saying it could not
recommend the new NIV Bible.
"Our initial analysis shows that the new NIV(2011) retains many of
the problems that were present in the TNIV, on which it is based,
especially with regard to the over 3,600 gender-related problems we
previously identified," said CBMW in a statement.
The groups took issue with the mixing of gender-unspecific singulars and plurals (that person/they).
The controversy has not affected Zondervan's plans to discontinue the current NIV translation and make way for the updated NIV.
The company said that throughout next year it plans to release more
digital products based on the new NIV, including more eBooks and apps.
SIC: CT/INT'L