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Originally Posted by Ohio
Couple comments Freedom.
NIV lost some credibility when the owner Collins (secular) bought the rights from Zondervan (Christians) and attempted a "gender neutral" version, thus de-masculating God. James Dobson and a host of other Christian leaders launched a public campaign to stop it. Lots of Christians still use it, however, and it was composed to sacrifice "literalness" for readability. I have the NIV Study Bible. I like the OT notes for historical background and the like, but the NT notes are seriously wanting in spiritual content. I won't read them.
The original RecVer was translated by a team which included John Ingalls. It was published in 1985 as a collection of individual books used during all the Life Study trainings, starting in 1974. I like it much better than the re-translation by Robichaux and others, which was a clumsily worded revision of the ASV. Ingalls was axed by Phillip Lee in 1989 for exposing corruption at LSM, so, of course, they had to can his work to save face, and scrub all their publications of his blackened name.
The revised RecVer came out in 1991, published by Cambridge Press, with gold edging. The binding itself is of top quality. From that point on LSM began to refer to it as the "gold bar" based on its "gold" profile.
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I understand the complaints against the gender neutralization, but for me, the only problem with it is that it makes the reading so bulked-up to gain nothing other than caring for the sensibilities of people who probably don't really care anyway.
We like God as simply masculine. But the attributes of God (even as taught by Lee) include what we would call the feminine. The all-sufficient God with an udder comes to mind. That goes way back in the OT. So at some level, God
is gender neutral. Most of the gender-oriented things that we really seem to grasp onto are the things that cause the most ardent Christians to tend toward excessive male domination and provide excuses for the actions of men toward their wives and other women. I do not subscribe to the notion that men and women are identical except for plumbing, but what makes us alike is seriously more than what separates us.
As far as whether the RecV is an acceptable translation, my understanding is that it is so much like one or more other major translations (with very few of Lee's pet substitutions included) that without the footnotes I could probably deal with it. But my fear is that the footnotes are too close by to be acceptable. For that reason, it might be better to return to the NASB, or move on to an ESV or NIV (get the older one if you want to avoid the gender stuff. That is what I use mostly). And it might be that reading it in as uncomfortable a version as possible, at least part of the time, could be better since it will not provide you with the same words that are mentally and emotionally attached to things that Lee taught. Avoid the Pavlov's dog effect (hear verse, think whatever Lee said).
(BTW, this was not a response to Ohio. It was intended as follow-on and something to consider for I-O.)