NIV Pocket Thin New Testament for Children [Paperback]

Zondervan (Author)

Book Description

Age Level: 6 and up | Grade Level: 1 and up

As its name suggests, this little New International Version (NIV) New Testament for children is small enough--and thin enough--to fit into a pocket. It's easy for kids to take to church, school--wherever they go! From the heartwarming cover--which shows Jesus surrounded by a group of smiling children--to the helpful end pages titled 'Famous Bible Passages' and 'Miracles of Christ,' this is truly a New Testament for kids.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

As its name suggests, this little New International Version (NIV) New Testament for children is small enough--and thin enough--to fit into a pocket. It's easy for kids to take to church, school--wherever they go! From the heartwarming cover--which shows Jesus surrounded by a group of smiling children--to the helpful end pages titled "Famous Bible Passages" and "Miracles of Christ," this is truly a New Testament for kids.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 6 and up
  
• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Zonderkidz (February 1, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0310920019
• ISBN-13: 978-0310920014
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 3.6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,622,442 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Overall, a great read, but I'm a little confused..., June 1, 2002

By 

ken_diercouff "[e-mail]" (Colorado Springs, CO USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: TNIV New Testament (Hardcover)

This Bible is a good reading Bible. Some of it's renderings are also progressive and innovative. Still, I'm confused by the fact that the TNIV at times retains unhelpful renderings, some of which are quite dated.

First, the good stuff. Too many good changes to list, but I'll give a few. Romans 12:1 "Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God- this is your proper worship as rational beings." Though not technically literal, the idea of our service as rational- logical- is definitely in the Greek and missing in most modern translations (most have "your spiritual worship"). 1 Corinthians 6:9 changed the confusing "homosexual offenders" in the NIV to "practicing homosexuals," which is clearer and accurate. The first part of Romans 8 is masterful.

Genitives are handled well. 1 John 2:15b, "If you love the world, love for the Father is not in you." Renderings found in most versions are unclear as to whether it is referring to God's love for us or our love for Him. "Spiritual songs" is now "songs of the Spirit," which is interesting, though interpretive.

One of the problems in any dynamic rendering is that of excluding possible interpretive options that exist in the original. Any translator is also an interpretor; it's the nature of the beast and let's not fool ourselves into thinking that any translation is untainted by human assumptions or dogmas. I don't agree with the TNIV forcing trinitarian thinking into verses with other possible- and legitimate- options. (See Romans 9:5 and Phillipians 2:6 for examples.) Still, in order to use modern translations I must live with that fact. "Sinful nature" is also a forced interpretation, but they still offer a footnote with "flesh."

On the negative side, the NIV translators said years ago that they would change the Lord's Prayer in future revisions. However, the TNIV retains the original Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6,including the "hallowed" in verse 9 and the awkward and totally non-dynamic verse 13: "And lead us not into temptation..." What's up with that? (On this verse, see the NLT for clarity.) The TNIV promoters, in their ads, claim that the TNIV is the translation for the next generation, that it speaks to us today, etc., yet it retained some language that no one uses anymore. Note to translators: Lead us not into antiquated phrasing. In Romans 13:13, the TNIV retains "debauchery," a perfectly fine but unused word, rather than updating to the useful phrase "sexual promiscuity" found in many new translations. In the current generation, "sober" means "not drunk," and little more, so the phrases "of sober mind" and "sober judgement" will be misunderstood or lost to the reader. The TNIV also kept "temperate." Why? Does anyone use that word anymore? It certainly is not a useful or dynamic word. Acts 3:20 is worded in a way that people would never speak: "and that he may send the Messiah, who has been appointed for you- even Jesus." (The obscure use of the words "even"- as an identifier- and "might"-where "could" or "should" would be used in a real conversation- drives me nuts.) Oh well... I'm done now.

Sometimes the translators seem uncertain as to when to be dynamic and when to be literal. In Romans 8:9a they try to be both, which confuses me: "You, however, are not controlled by the sinful nature [dynamic], but are in the Spirit [literal]." Compare this with the NIV rendering and share in my confusion.

Anyway, I hate to criticize any work that tries to make the Bible clearer using modern words, paragraph structure and sentence structure. The strength of the NIV was its great word flow and modernity, a theme the TNIV generally sticks with. This work is also not plaqued by the incessant use of run-on sentences found in many translations. The TNIV is very readable. I think it still needs more work. Most of the changes, including the gender related ones, are superb. I look forward to the complete Bible in TNIV.

23 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Critics of the TNIV are "Much Ado about Nothing", February 28, 2003

By 

Matthew D. MacKellar (Minneapolis, MN, United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: TNIV New Testament (Hardcover)

The TNIV has come under much criticism from the evangelical world, including a boycott by the Southern Baptist Convention and attempts to have the translation removed from Christian book stores. This ire is "much ado about nothing" and indeed reflects the desperation of those who would resort to censorship in their efforts to promote their viewpoint.

What is the issue? Simply that the TNIV uses what is called "gender neutral language," which is the use of more inclusive language when the original language of Scripture calls for this. For example, in Matthew 4:4, according to the NIV, Jesus said: "Man does not live on bread alone..." Now when Jesus was making the point that spiritual sustenance from God's Word is needed even more than physical sustenance, obviously He wasn't implying that only men--and not women--have need of God's Word. In the patriarchal culture of Christ's time here on earth, in which women were regarded as property (though, significantly, not by Jesus), people would use masculine words when referring to all of humankind. Today, in our society which is unevenly making progress towards a conscious equality of all humanity, using a word such as "man" or "mankind" can imply that only males and not females are in mind. Exclusive application to men was not Jesus' intent in this verse--He was just using the idiom of the day. Well, as the preface to the TNIV says, the first priority of translators is "faithfulness to the meaning of the biblical writers" and therefore "the work of translating the Bible is never finally finished" due to the continual changing of idiom and meaning in any language. Therefore, for the sake of accuracy to the meaning of Jesus' words, the TNIV translates Matthew 4:4 as, "People do not live on bread alone..." In similar fashion, the TNIV will translate a verse such as Romans 12:1 as "brothers and sisters" instead of just "brothers."

This is the extent of the "liberal" changes found in the TNIV which are being so vehemently decried. The TNIV does NOT call God "mother," as some would imply (though the Bible includes numerous mothering images for God: Isaiah 66:13, Matthew 23:37-38, etc.)

I for one am thankful for translations such as the TNIV and organizations such as Christians for Biblical Equality which seek to make the full meaning of God's Word available in contemporary language and understanding. "Liberalism" in an area is not a wrong when the conservatives are defending something that God Himself is not even defending. Perhaps critics of the TNIV ought to check to see if they are fighting on the correct front.

17 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Weaker than the NIV, August 26, 2003

By 

P J Williams (Cambridge, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: TNIV New Testament (Paperback)

Feminists may love it, traditionalists may hate it, but careful readers will just go away unsatisfied.

This translation includes some improvements on the NIV. Thus in Matthew 13:32 `Though it [the mustard seed] is the smallest of all seeds' (TNIV) is better as a representation of the Greek than `Though it is the smallest of all your seeds' (NIV). I also preferred Matthew 27:46 and Luke 1:15. However, on the whole it is weaker. The supposedly sensitive changes in gender issues have been carried out in a fairly indiscriminate way.

For instance, Matthew 5:22 now reads 'anyone who says to a brother or sister, "Raca"'. The problem is that 'Raca' is a masculine singular term in Aramaic. No one is any more likely to call a woman 'Raca' than are we to call a woman 'male fool'. The gender of 'Raca' should have been taken by the translators as a sign that the Greek here meant 'brother' not 'brother or sister'. The application of Jesus' teaching to include not insulting females should really be a hermeneutical step not a translational one.

Similarly indiscriminate are the translations in Acts 2:14, 2:22, 3:12, 14:15 and 17:22 which take the clearly male term ANDRES 'men' to refer to males and females. All along sensible people have been arguing that Greek ANTHROPOI can mean 'men and women'. Quite right. But no scholar has ever tried to argue this with ANDRES. Consequently, it seems that the translators are trying to blur the distinction between the original audience of the speeches in Acts and us today.

Probably the most obviously problematic passage from the point of view of gender has nothing to do with recent debates about inclusive language: In 1 Corinthians 7:4 we now read 'The wife does not have authority over her own body *but yields it to her husband*. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body *but yields it to his wife*.'

This is simply twisting the text. There is nothing in the Greek about 'yielding'. However, TNIV has actually moved the locus of authority from one spouse to exactly the opposite one. Now no doubt the translators were concerned about how wife-batterers might abuse the text. But that just shows that the text requires sensible interpretation and wise application not to be rewritten by the translators.

Aside from issues affecting gender we may ask whether a translation that has decided that the word 'saints' is too obscure a designation for the people of God can really claim to be using plain English when it introduces the phrase 'elemental spiritual forces' (Colossians 2:8, 2:20). Enquiry among various scholars specializing on Paul showed that they too were rather perplexed by the phrase.

The translation also does some unhelpful things textually:

In 2 Peter 2:15 we read of 'Balaam son of Bezer' with a footnote telling us that the Greek reads 'Bosor'. Weird. It is not as if either spelling means very much to the average reader, but on what basis do the translators decide that their spelling is better than that of the Greek?

In Mark 1:41 we read that Jesus 'indignant' rather than 'filled with compassion'. A footnote states 'Many manuscripts _Filled with compassion, Jesus_'. Strictly this is true, but it is rather economical with the truth: *all* manuscripts except for one Greek one and three Latin ones read 'filled with compassion'. The problem is that this type of footnote simply exacerbates what was already a tendency the NIV footnotes to mislead by giving a wrong impression of the textual evidence. The translators do not want average readers to know that they have in fact chosen to print a reading which very rarely found in manuscripts simply because they believe that it is more likely to be original than the others.

In John 3:3 (cf. 3:5) Jesus says, 'Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born again'. So, is being born again a result of seeing the kingdom or does it happen before? It's unfortunate for a translation to be unclear on something like this.

Since it is probably the case that the majority of changes with regard to the NIV are changes for the worse it would be easier to start a new revision of the NIV than to repair this.